Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
Interpretation
Happiness comes from being healthy and letting go of past troubles.
This quote by Albert Schweitzer suggests that true happiness is achieved through maintaining good health and the ability to forget negative experiences. It implies that if we are physically well and can discard painful memories, we are more likely to cultivate a joyful and fulfilling life.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a wellness workshop to highlight the importance of physical health.
I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late.
Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.
By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.
No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.
The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.
The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.
There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
All human history attests That happiness for man, - the hungry sinner! - Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner. ~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy.
For now I'm happy the way I am β short and plump. I would not go in for Botox or anything like that. I'm content with the way I look. What's wrong with looking like Susan Boyle? What's the matter with that?
You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Donβt just wait for a man to come along. Thatβs the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself.
If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we'll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.
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