Eric Weiner · 335 pages
Rating: (26.6K votes)
“Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“So the greatest source of happiness is other people--and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we're really wealthy, to an estate. We think we're moving up, but really we're walling off ourselves.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“[Happiness is] a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“I've always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is fining the right corner.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Part of positive psychology is about being positive, but sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate. Some people don't want to be happy, and that's okay. They want meaningful lives, and those are not always the same as happy lives.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Maybe happiness is this: not feeling that you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“I would not have done anything differently. All of the moments in my life, everyone I have met, every trip I have taken, every success I have enjoyed, every blunder I have made, every loss I have endured has been just right. I am not saying that they were all good or that they happened for a reason...but they have been right. They have been okay. As far as revelations go its pretty lame, I know. Okay is not bliss or even happiness. Okay is not the basis for a new religion or self help movement. Okay won't get me on Oprah, but okay is a start and for that I am grateful. Can I thank Bhutan for this breakthrough? It's hard to say […] It is a strange place, peculiar in ways large and small. You lose your bearings here and when that happens a crack forms in your armor. A crack large enough, if you're lucky, to let in a few shafts of light.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“I've spent most of my life trying to think my way to happiness, and my failure to achieve that goal only proves, in my mind, that I am not a good enough thinker. It never occurred to me that the source of my unhappiness is not flawed thinking but thinking itself.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“a simple question to identify your true home: where do you want to die?”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“We help other people because we can, or because it makes us feel good, not because we're counting on some future payback. There is a word for this; love.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Only a fool or philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“For me, a place unvisited is like an unrequited love. A dull ache that- try as you might to think it away, to convince yourself that she really wasn't the right country for you- just won't leave you in peace.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“As I railed on and on, I became increasingly energied and excited by my own misery and misanthropy until I reached a kind of orgasm of negativity.'... The Brits don't merely enjoy misery, they get off on it.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Rule number one: wear loose clothing.
No Problem.
Rule number two: no alcohol for the next three days.
Slight problem. I'll miss my evening glass of wine but figure I can go for three days without and compensate later.
And the last rule: absolutely no coffee or tea or caffeine of any kind.
Big problem. This rule hits me like a sucker punch and sure would have knocked me to the floor had I not been sitting there already. I'm eying the exits, plotting my escape. I knew enlightenment came at a price, but i had no idea the price was this steep. A sense of real panic sets in. How am I going to survive for the next seventy-two hours without a single cup of coffee?”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“We are shaped not only by our current geography but by our ancestral one as well. Americans, for instance, retain a frontier spirit even though the only frontier that remains is that vast open space between the SUV and strip mall. We are our past.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Some places are like family. They annoy us to no end, especially during the holidays, but we keep coming back for more because we know, deep in our hearts, that our destinies are intertwined.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“what doesn't kill you not only make you stronger, but also more honest.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Ketika pohon terakhir ditebang,
Ketika sungai terakhir dikosongkan,
Ketika ikan terakhir ditangkap,
Barulah manusia akan menyadari bahwa dia tidak dapat memakan uang.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“That's why we feel so disoriented, irritated even, when these touchstones from our past are altered. We don't like it when our hometown changes, even in small ways. It's unsettling. The playground! It used to be right here, I swear. Mess with our hometown, and you're messing with our past, with who we are. Nobody likes that.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“The late British-born philosopher Alan Watts, in one of his wonderful lectures on eastern philosophy, used this analogy: "If I draw a circle, most people, when asked what I have drawn, will say I have drawn a circle or a disc, or a ball. Very few people will say I've drawn a hole in the wall, because most people think of the inside first, rather than thinking of the outside. But actually these two sides go together--you cannot have what is 'in here' unless you have what is out there.' "
In other words, where we are is vital to who we are.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Demikian pula halnya, hanya ketidakbahagiaan yang memiliki makna. Itulah sebabnya mengapa kita merasa terpaksa membicarakannya dan punya banyak kata untuk melukiskannya. Kebahagiaan tidak membutuhkan kata-kata.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“The word "utopia" has two meanings. It means both "good place" and "nowhere". That's the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn't want to live in the perfect place, either. "A life time of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on earth," wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“And yet, over the years I've met so many people like Jared who seem to be more at home, happier, living in a country not of their birth. ... Not political refugees, escaping a repressing regime, nor economic refugees, crossing a border in search of a better-paying job. The are hedonic refugees, moving to a new land, a new culture, because they are happier there. Usually hedonic refugees have an ephiphany, a moment of great clarity when they realize, beyond a doubt, that they were born in the wrong country.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Perhaps it's true you can't go back in time, but you can return to the scene of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fateful decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Until the eighteenth century, people believed that biblical paradise, the Garden of Eden, was a real place. It appeared on maps--located, ironically, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now modern-day Iraq.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Thinking about happiness makes us less happy.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“Every country has its cocktail-party question. A simple one-sentence query, the answer to which unlocks a motherlode of information about the person you just met.... In Switzerland it is, Where are you from? That is all you need to know about someone.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
“We need to a new word to describe Swiss happiness.”
― Eric Weiner, quote from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Eric Weiner
Born place: The United States
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“Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”
― quote from My Brilliant Friend
“To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“...nothing is permanent. Everything and everyone you know can change at any moment. That's how I see things now - except for you. You're the one constant in my life.”
― Alexandra Adornetto, quote from Heaven
“I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”
― George Eliot, quote from Adam Bede
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