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Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edg...more

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People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the resul...more

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There’s this human capacity for joy and endurance, even when things are at their worst. A joy that occurs not despite our suffering, but within it.

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You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.

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When it comes to developing a worldview, we tend to face this false division: Either you are a realist who says the world is terrible, or a naïve opti...more

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Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that...more

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I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek ...more

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I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.

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Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking f...more

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... most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment.

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Not town can live peacefully, whatever its laws," Plato wrote, "when its citizens ... do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the ca...more

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The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out al...more

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Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like bandit - will behave like one; always remaining one country or...more

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True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.

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This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, "...more