We are never as fortunate or as unfortunate as we suppose

On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine.

You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.

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

Be happy, but never satisfied.

After all, life is never so jolly or so miserable as people seem to think.

We are never so vulnerable as when we love, and never so hopelessly unhappy as when we lose the object of our love.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

Things are never as bad or as good as they seem.

We are never prepared for what we expect.

We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.

Our idea of happiness may be the very thing that’s preventing us from being happy.

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.

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