happiness – secretive dreams

I believe that everyone has his own private happiness – when he has it. And to wish someone a happiness he might not want would be most imprudent. I don’t know exactly what you desire, and that is why I make my wishes extremely vague. But I have little fear of their not coming true. You have happiness within you: that is the safest, if not the only, way of having it. In any case, whatever may be the happiness you dream of (to dream of it is already to have it in the most ideal sense of the word, which as a good idealist I believe to be the only true one), I am sure it is a happiness of the very best quality.

Marcel Proust, from a letter to Horace de Landau written c. May 1894
(via mrsclarkkent)

But I want you to know that when I imagine myself happy, it is with you.

Dean Winchester & Lisa.

(via alterated)

It’s this idea that we work these incredibly long hours, we’re very stressed and there’s pressure on us to be more productive than ever before. “Oh, and here’s your hour of mindfulness training every week.” It feels like you’re not really addressing the actual problem. You can’t pay your rent, you don’t have any health insurance, but oh, try a bit of mindfulness. You’re in a burning building and here’s a tiny little fire extinguisher. Try and sort it out.

Ruth Whippman interview

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.

T.H. White, The Once and Future King

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Khalil Gibran

Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it’s as simple as that.

Michael Cunningham, The Hours

Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

Isaac Asimov (via wordsthat-speak)

The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (via wordsnquotes)

If I got more happy secrets I would share them, but true secrets are more often not the positive sentiments we post about ourselves on Facebook or see reflected in Hallmark cards, they are the complicated feelings we struggle with in the dark because they make us feel alone.

Frank Warren, Postsecret May 16, 2015