François Lelord · 165 pages
Rating: (11.9K votes)
“Knowing and feeling are two different things, and feeling is what counts.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Making comparisons can spoil your happiness.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Happiness often comes when least expected.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Lesson no. 5: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Many people see happiness only in their future.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Nobody wants to live with a person who'll never be happy.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Happiness is feeling useful to others.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Lesson no. 17: Happiness is caring about the happiness of those you love.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Women are very complicated, even if you are a psychiatrist.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“And since he was seeing more and more people who were unhappy for no apparent reason, he was becoming more and more tired, and even a little happy himself. He began to wonder whether he was in the right profession, whether he was happy with his life, whether he wasn't missing out on something. And then he felt very afraid because he wondered whether these unhappy people were contagious.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh?”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“I'm old enough to ask myself that question, but not so old that I don't care what the answer is.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“But, in reality, being unhappy might also teach him something about happiness.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Be vary wary of people who declare that they're going to create heaven on earth, they almost invariably create hell.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“nature or nurture' said the professor. 'Whichever way the parents are to blame”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Lesson no. 20: Happiness is a certain way of seeing things.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“The only shadow on my happiness is when I tell myself sometimes that as it's all going well, it can't last, that one day things won't be so good.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“He had fallen in love with her emotions, and that was a very profound feeling indeed.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“It's one thing thinking something and another thing knowing it.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“True wisdom would be the ability to live without this scenery, to be the same person even at the bottom of a well. But that, it has to be said, is not so easy.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Or rather, he was sad because that morning he'd understood that he'd understood nothing, because while he still understood nothing he wasn't sad at all, but now that he'd understood that he'd understood nothing he felt sad, if you follow.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Edouard said that he didn't take Hector for a fool, but he could see that Hector had fallen in love, which was worse than being a fool.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“happiness is a different thing altogether. If you try to achieve it, you have every chance of failing. And besides, how would you ever know that you’d achieved it? Of course one can’t blame people, especially unhappy people, for wanting to be happier and setting themselves goals in order to try to escape from their unhappiness.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Adeline was really rather charming, she always had a man in her life, but it never worked out: either they were nice but she didn't find them very exciting; or they were exciting but she didn't find them particularly nice, or they were neither nice nor exciting and she wondered why she was with them at all. She found a way of making the exciting men nicer and that was by leaving them. But then, they weren't exciting anymore either.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“He had realised that it was Clara he loved, and that he loved her in many different ways. (Because there are even more ways of loving than there are ways of being happy, but it would take another book to explain them all.)”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“And since he was seeing more and more people who were unhappy for no apparent reason, he was becoming more and more tired, and even a little unhappy himself. He began to wonder if he was in the right profession, whether he was happy with life, whether he wasn't missing out on something. And then he felt very afraid because he wondered whether these unhappy people were contagious.”
― François Lelord, quote from Hector and the Search for Happiness
“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.”
― Louis de Bernières, quote from Corelli's Mandolin
“But the law is an odd thing. For instance, one country in Europe has a law that requires all its bakers to sell bread at the exact same price. A certain island has a law that forbids anyone from removing its fruit. And a town not too far from where you live has a law that bars me from coming within five miles of its borders.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Bad Beginning
“Sleep in peace, you members of the jury who condemned me to this place; sleep in peace,”
― Henri Charrière, quote from Papillon
“I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea
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