The essentials of real happiness are few, simple, and close at hand.
I was dining recently with a particular successful young man who is trying very hard to be happy, but he takes such a complicated, strenuous view of everything that his happiness is always flying from him. He drives everything so fiercely, his life is so vigorous, so complicated, that happiness can not find a home with him very long. Nor does he understand why. He has money , health,; but he always has that restless far-away, absent minded gaze into something beyond, and I do not think he is ever really very happy. His whole manner of living is extremely complex. He does not seem to know where to find happiness. He has evidently mistaken the very nature of happiness. He thinks it consists in making a great show, in having great possessions, in doing things which attract a great deal of attention; but happiness would be strangled, suffocated in such an environment. The essentials of real happiness are few, simple, and close at hand. Happiness is made up of very simple ingredients. It flees from the complex life. It evades pomp and show. The heart would starve amid great luxuries. Simple joys and the treasures of the heart and mind make happiness.
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One of the most pathetic pictures in civilization is the great army of men and woman searching the world over for happiness, as though it existed in things rather than in a state of mind.
Orison Sweet Marden
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