In every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.

Happiness (as the mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by asymptote.

Human happiness never remains long in the same place.

Just to fill the hour—that is happiness.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do.

There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.

The right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.

Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves very little trace in history.