Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels.
Interpretation
Happiness is often pursued but can be found in the simple moments of life.
In this quote, Bertolt Brecht highlights the irony of the human pursuit of happiness. Many people actively search for happiness, fixating on distant goals or ideals, all the while overlooking the fact that true happiness is often found in the present moment and in the small, everyday occurrences around them.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding joy in everyday life.
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
Feeling very happy - why? An explanation is needed. No, happiness needs no explanation, happiness is its own explanation. God is creating because that is the only way he can be happy, that is the only way he loves, that is the only way he sings, that's the only way he can be at all. Creation is his innermost nature, no why is needed.
We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing -- half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could.
The best kind of wine is that which is most pleasant to him who drinks it.
Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.
Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it's not out there is that it's inside us.
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