People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are.

Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.

Self-doubt is that part of the soul that is able to taste the bitter in life as well as the sweet. It is open to a side of life that a sunny disposition must ignore in order to carry on smiling. It is less interested in pretense and more aware of the suffering entailed in daily living. It is realistic about the balance of suffering and happiness, but because of this realism is willing to be thankful for whatever genuine happiness is possible. It celebrates the melancholy nature of aloneness, but because of its refusal to shirk aloneness knows the worth of a real relationship.

Some people appear to be happy, but they simply don't give the matter much thought. Others make plans: I'm going to have a husband, a home, two children, a house in the country. As long as they're busy doing that, they're like bulls looking for the bullfighter: they react instinctively, they blunder on, with no idea where the target is. They get their car, sometimes they even get a Ferrari, and they think that's the meaning of life, and they never question it. Yet their eyes betray the sadness that even they don't know they carry in their soul. Are you happy?

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.

My natural optimism just leads me to be skeptical.

A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.

And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are.

We are never as unhappy as we think, nor as happy has we had hoped

I’m not often aware that I am happy. But I often remember that I have been happy.

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.