The Happiness Project: If you're in the mood to read a classic work about happiness...

I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, a memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happy--from Aristotle to Martin Seligman to Thoreau to Oprah. On this daily blog, I recount my adventures as I grapple with the challenge of being happier. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will hit the shelves in December 2009 (Harper).

Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

First: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Second: One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Third: The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)
Fourth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

What Started Me Thinking

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." Mark Twain.
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

If you're in the mood to read a classic work about happiness...

On the last day of each month, I include a happiness suggested-reading list. (I'm fudging it a bit this month, because Saturday is always my day to post my favorite quotes.)

Here is a list of just a few of the key classic works on the subject of happiness -- ones that I found particularly useful or interesting. It's a stretch to include St. Therese's memoir here, because it doesn't really fit, but I couldn't resist -- I love Story of a Soul so much.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
Cicero, On the Good Life
Epicurus, The Essential Epicurus
Plutarch, Selected Essays
Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena I and II
Seneca, Notes from a Stoic
St. Therese, Story of a Soul
Montaigne, Essays

Posted September 29, 2006

Comments

I've heard good things about Robert Nozick's The Examined Life. Haven't read it yet though.

Posted by: Julie Hilden | September 29, 2006 at 05:31 PM

i'm glad you are enjoying the salzburg conference. that is so cool of you to head east into the wind looking for nothing by with lots of questions. also, i'm intrigued by this book list. i love biographies. my favorite being ben franklin's, anita hill and martha gelhorn (hemmingway's wife). now these books on happiness look a little out of my league!

Posted by: funchilde | October 02, 2006 at 02:46 PM

You may enjoy "Alain on Hapiness". It is another classic work from a lesser known french philosopher from last century.

http://www.amazon.com/Alain-Happiness/dp/0810108208/ref=sr_1_3/103-6230687-7145434?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175729323&sr=8-3

Posted by: Jean-Marc | April 04, 2007 at 07:38 PM

One fairly modern book, one which gives concrete insights about happiness, is "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" by Dale Carnegie. The first chapter can change your life!

Posted by: Michael Sporer | August 26, 2007 at 11:55 AM

Bertrand Russell's "The Conquest of Happiness" is a neglected classic. Russell wasn't just a mathematical genius.

Posted by: Stephen | January 30, 2009 at 03:19 PM

Where's Plato "The Republic"? That's about happiness too. Book II. Justice is sufficient for happiness.

Posted by: JS | March 02, 2009 at 09:33 AM

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Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On this blog, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.