It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.

It is impossible to build one’s own happiness on the unhappiness of others.

Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.

It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.

yeah, you can't buy happiness

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

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

No man can demonstrate peace and cling to unhappiness.

Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.

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

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

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?

Don't spend you life making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem.

You are concerned with your own happiness and I am telling you that there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own, it is where the ‘I’ is not.