The Happiness Project: Happiness quotation from Plutarch.

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

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.

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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.”

Happiness quotation from Plutarch.

“Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.” -- Plutarch

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Check out my new one-minute internet movie, Secrets of Adulthood.

Posted July 20, 2008 in Quotation

Comments

Gretchen - The link for your movie is not working.

Posted by: Susan | July 20, 2008 at 07:42 PM

Gretchen,

I think there's a typo in this part of your quotation: "makes a man’s smart with perpetual wounds". I think it's supposed to be, "makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds". See: http://tinyurl.com/64rqzp

Posted by: Alex C. | July 20, 2008 at 11:24 PM

@Alex C.

That makes much more sense. Thanks. Nice quote pick Gretchen!

http://yinvsyang.com/

Posted by: Pete | July 21, 2008 at 08:22 AM

I like the pict, describe how wise that plutarch is

Posted by: Aldohas | July 21, 2008 at 12:43 PM

Sigh. Off to fix the link, off to fix the typo. Thanks!!

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | July 21, 2008 at 01:05 PM

I think I'm missing something - why is this labeled a happiness quote?

Posted by: laura | July 22, 2008 at 11:37 AM

This is the most depressing thing I've read all day. I guess maybe it's a happiness quote for those who've never done anything wicked, ever?

FWIW, I follow you in RSS here and over at Real Simple and do appreciate you so much! But I think I'm missing something on this one...

Posted by: Kathy | July 24, 2008 at 02:59 PM

that 's very intersting!

Posted by: areeya | July 25, 2008 at 04:28 AM

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