The Conquest of Happiness

Notes from the conquest of happiness, the best help book I think I've read.

What I do maintain is that success can only be one ingredient in happiness, and is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.

There are only two reasons for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

A child develops best when left undisturbed in the same soil.

What ever we wish to think, we are creatures of the Earth; our life is part of the life of Earth, and we draw our nourishment from it just as the plants and animals do.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

Voluntarily or involuntarily, of choice or of necessity, most moderns lead a nerve-racking life and are continually too tied to be capable of enjoyment without the help of alcohol.
...worry could be prevented by a better philosophy of life and a little more mental discipline.

The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or if it is at night, about nothing at all.
It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times.

The man who can center his thoughts and hopes upon something transceding self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life which is impossible to the pure egoist.
The nervous breakdown which appears to be produced by the work is, in fact, in every case tht I have ever known personally, produced by some emotional trouble from which the patient attempts to escape by means of his work.
Worry is a form of fear and all fear is a form of fatigue.

on envy
The habit of thinking in terms of comparison is a fatal one.

You can get away from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom you imagine, perhaps quite falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself.

All bad things are interconnected, and any one of them is liable to be the cause of any other.

conscience - the fear of being found out.

It is in the moments when the mind is most active and the fewest things are fogotten that the most intense joys are experienced. The happiness that requires intoxication of no matter what sort is a spurious and unsatisfying kind. The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.

on persecution mania
remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself.
don't overestimate your own merits
don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself.
don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any desure to persecute you.
Whatever is to be done, can only be done adequately by the help of a certain zest, and zest is difficult without some self regarding motive.
No person should be expected to distort the main lines of his life for the sake of another individual.

very few people can be happy unless on the whole their way of life and their outlook on the world is approved by those with whom they have social relations, and more especially by those whom with they live.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, larely because they regard such departures as a criticism of themselves.
The best way to increase toleration is ti multiply the number of individuals who enjoy real happiness and do not therefore find their chief pleasure in the infliction of pain upon their fellow men.

On Happiness
there are two sources, of the heart and of the head.
The man who underestimates himself is perpetually being surprised by success whereas the man who overestimates himself is pleasant, the latter is unpleasant.
Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in person and things.
The person whose attitude towards others is genuinely of this kind will be a source of happiness and a recipient of reciprocal kindness.
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more that it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than possible.
The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, ad let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
zest is the secret of happiness and well-being.
The only sex relations that have real value are those in which there is no reticence and in which the whole personality of both becomes merged in a new collective personality. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps most fatal to true happiness.

On family
I have the happiness of parenthood greater than any other I have experienced.
To be happy in this world, epecially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from one gem to the remote and unknown future.
To the man or woman who has children and grandchilden and loves with a natural affection, the future is important, at any rate to the limit of their lives, not only through morality or through an effort of imagination, but naturally and instinctively.
parental affection is a special kind of feeling which the normal human being experiences towards his or her children, but not towards any other human being.
Our parents love us because we are their children and this is an unalterable fact, so that we feel more safe with them than with any one else. In times of success this may seem unimportant, but in times of failure it affords a consolation and a security not to be found elsewhere.
The parent that genuinely desires the child's welfare more than his or herpower over the child will, if sufficiently intelligent, not need textbooks on psyoanalysis to say what should and what should not be done, but will be guided aright by impulse.
For important as parenthood is as an element of life, it is not satisfying if it is treated as the whole of life, and the unsatisfied parent is likely to be an emotionally grasping parent. It is important, therefore, quite as much in the interests of the children as in those of the mother, that motherhood should not cut her off from all other interests and pursuits.