Deep in her heart, she wasn't sure she deserved to be happy, nor did she believe that she was worthy of someone who seemed...normal.

Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.

It is never hopeless. But sometimes I cannot hope. I try always to hope but sometimes I cannot.

I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.

In the first place, no man is happy but strives his whole life long after a supposed happiness which he seldom attains, and even if he does it is only to be disappointed with it.

All chances of happiness are gone from me. Just being with myself is hell all the time anyway.

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

Don't wish me happiness
I don't expect to be happy all the time...
It's gotton beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all.

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

I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

No, the opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless gray horizon of resignation and indifference.3 It’s the belief that everything is fucked, so why do anything at all?

The desire to feel happy or think positively all the time hinders many people's authentic existence. It lowers resilience.

Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody's happy.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he lives so as to make happiness impossible.