Quotes from The Pursuit of Happiness

Douglas Kennedy ·  656 pages

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“The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


“...hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


“I could hear him swallowing hard, trying not to cry. Why is it that we always try to be brave at moments when bravery is futile?”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


“죽음의 순간이 찾아오면 우리가 삶이라고 부르는 시간의 무상함으 깨달을 수 있을 뿐이다. 그럼에도 우리는 살아가는 동안 언쟁을 벌이고, 원한을 품고, 분노하고, 질투하고, 싸우고 후회한다. 세상에서 분출되는 온갖 갈등이 인간 존재에 어두운 그림자를 드리운다. 결국 모든 게 죽음으로 막을 내리게 될줄 알면서도 사람들은 포기할 줄 모른다. 우리는 전혀 대수롭지 않은 일에 분노한다. 분노는 근본적으로 중요하지 않은 일에 중요한 의미를 부여한다. 분노는 우리가 언젠가 죽으리라는 걸 잊게 한다.”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


“When it comes to women, men only hear what they want to hear. It’s one of the many failures of their sex.”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness



“...човек става наистина възрастен, когато съумее да прости на родителите си това, че те имат точно толкова недостатъци, колкото който и да е друг човек ... и после да признае, че въпреки ограничеността на собствените си разбирания, те са направили за него най-доброто, на което са способни.”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


“At dawn, nothing seems certain... yet everything appears possible.”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


“There are moments when you think you will cry forever. You never do. Eventually, sheer physical exhaustion forces you to stop, to settle, to becalm yourself amidst all the mad turbulence of bereavement.”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


“Parisian arrogance meant that nobody was important, nobody counted.”
― Douglas Kennedy, quote from The Pursuit of Happiness


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About the author

Douglas Kennedy
Born place: in Manhattan, The United States
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Popular quotes

“Think about ethanol again. The benefits of that $7 billion tax subsidy are bestowed on a small group of farmers, making it quite lucrative for each one of them. Meanwhile, the costs are spread over the remaining 98 percent of us, putting ethanol somewhere below good oral hygiene on our list of everyday concerns. The opposite would be true with my plan to have left-handed voters pay subsidies to right-handed voters. There are roughly nine right-handed Americans for every lefty, so if every right-handed voter were to get some government benefit worth $100, then every left-handed voter would have to pay $900 to finance it. The lefties would be hopping mad about their $900 tax bills, probably to the point that it became their preeminent political concern, while the righties would be only modestly excited about their $100 subsidy. An adept politician would probably improve her career prospects by voting with the lefties.

Here is a curious finding that makes more sense in light of what we‘ve just discussed. In countries where farmers make up a small fraction of the population, such as America and Europe, the government provides large subsidies for agriculture. But in countries where the farming population is relatively large, such as China and India, the subsidies go the other way. Farmers are forced to sell their crops at below-market prices so that urban dwellers can get basic food items cheaply. In the one case, farmers get political favors; in the other, they must pay for them. What makes these examples logically consistent is that in both cases the large group subsidizes the smaller group.

In politics, the tail can wag the dog. This can have profound effects on the economy.”
― Charles Wheelan, quote from Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science


“Your brain can only process a tiny portion of your environment,
It risks being overwhelmed by the volume
of information that bombards you every waking moment.
Your brain compensates by filtering out the 99.9 percent of
your environment that doesn’t matter to you.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment


“Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You're no more mature, just more burned.”
― Karl Marlantes, quote from What It is Like to Go to War


“Frankly, if there ever was a time when I was really happy, it wasn't during those first intoxicating moments of my success, but long before that, when I hadn't yet read or shown my manuscript to anyone -- during those long nights of ecstatic hopes and dreams and passionate love of my work, when I had grown attached to my vision, to the characters I had created myself, as though they were my own offspring, as though they really existed -- and I loved, rejoiced and grieved over them, at times even shedding quite genuine tears over my guileless hero.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Insulted and Humiliated


“You're seriously talking about a ghost. This building - or parts of it - has been here for two and a half centuries. It would strike me odder if there wasn't a ghost. Not everything, everyone, leaves.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from The Next Always


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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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