Hector and the Search for Happiness

Knowing and feeling are two different things, and feeling is what counts.

Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.

The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!

Lesson no. 5: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story

Nobody wants to live with a person who'll never be happy.

Happiness is feeling useful to others.

Lesson no. 17: Happiness is caring about the happiness of those you love.

Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.

Women are very complicated, even if you are a psychiatrist.

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.

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?

I'm old enough to ask myself that question, but not so old that I don't care what the answer is.

But, in reality, being unhappy might also teach him something about happiness.

Be vary wary of people who declare that they're going to create heaven on earth, they almost invariably create hell.

nature or nurture' said the professor. 'Whichever way the parents are to blame

Lesson no. 20: Happiness is a certain way of seeing things.

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.

He had fallen in love with her emotions, and that was a very profound feeling indeed.

It's one thing thinking something and another thing knowing it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.