You can make yourself happy or miserable - it's the same amount of effort.
Interpretation
Happiness is a choice that requires the same effort as misery.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury emphasizes the idea that one has the power to influence their own emotional state. By suggesting that happiness and misery both require effort, he encourages individuals to make a conscious choice to pursue happiness, highlighting the significance of perspective in shaping our experiences.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal happiness.
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)
I never went to college, so I went to the library.
There must be something in books, something we canβt imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You donβt stay for nothing.
I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.
The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
a man possessed with peace is always smiling
Happiness is the death of the ego. If you want to remain a separate entity from existence as almost everybody is trying to do, you will be afraid of being blissful, cheerful. You will feel guilty in being blissful. You will feel suicidal because you are committing suicide on the psychological level, on the level of the ego.
What is without us has no connection with happiness, only so far as the preservation of our lives and health depends upon it. . . . Happiness springs immediately from the mind.
Today, let us swim wildly, joyously in gratitude.
If you possess happiness you possess everything: to be happy is to be in tune with God.
Smiling always with a never fading serenity of countenance, and flourishing in an immortal youth.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.