The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Dostoevsky.

The Happiness Project

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT is the memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier – happily, it was a #1 New York Times bestseller. As one of the hundreds of experiments I've conducted, I started this blog. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of happiness. –

Gretchen Rubin

What Started Me Thinking

"The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." 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.”

“For we are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.” --Dostoevsky

*
Now for a jarring transition --
I'm a regular on Karen Salmansohn's terrific daily radio show, the Be Happy Dammit Hour on Sirius LIME 114. Yesterday we talked about the critical importance of having strong relationships,and she mentioned some interesting studies that I hadn't seen, about the difference between the way men and women gossip -- discussed on her blog, Not Salmon. Highlights: men seem to gossip more than women, and both men and women prefer to gossip with women, and women give more dramatic reactions and ask more follow-up questions. Also, only 5% of gossip time is devoted to criticism -- less than I would've expected. Interesting.

*
New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.

Comments

Really, Dostoevsky said this? The man who wrote "Anna Karenina" and "Crime and Punishment"? I want to know what drugs he was taking, because I need them, now!

Posted by: aj | August 18, 2007 at 06:25 PM

my sentiments as well, WHAT! Dostoevsky said THAT - you mean another Dostoevsky, surely. Not Fyodor who wrote the Idiot and the Notes from the Underground!! Otherwise its another instance of - between the idea, and the reality, falls the shadow - and aint that the truth (oh and t s eliot said that)

Posted by: Daria | August 18, 2007 at 11:02 PM

Sorry! I was rushing yesterday, and forgot to add that the quotation is from THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and is spoken by one of the characters in the novel.

It always strikes me as such a Tolstoy-ish sentiment...

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | August 19, 2007 at 03:47 PM

So if both men and women gossip, and if both prefer gossiping with women, wouldn't it follow that women gossip more (as in, they would be part of more gossip sessions than men:)) Seems like an interesting disconnect there. And I'm surprised too by how small the percentage is of negative gossip!!

Aj, the literature police in me is making me say: Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina, not Dostoevsky. . . but I do agree with the sentiment.

Posted by: N | August 19, 2007 at 09:21 PM

Saw an interesting article on happiness among teenagers and young adults. Might be useful for you:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070819/ap_on_re_us/youth_poll_happiness

-kevin

Posted by: Kevin | August 20, 2007 at 08:00 AM

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.