Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Happy people feel purposeful and useful, similar to practical items.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver suggests that a key distinction between happy individuals and those who are less content is the feeling of being useful and practical. Just as common objects have defined purposes, the sense of being valuable and serving a function in the world contributes significantly to one’s happiness and fulfillment.
Themes
HappinessPurposeUtilityFulfillmentMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about finding joy in life, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of feeling useful.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
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I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
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Everyone contributes a word, a sentence, an image, but in the end it all makes sense: the happiness of one becomes the joy of all.
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It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.
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All I ever wanted since I arrived here on Earth were the things that turned out to be within reach. The same things I needed as a baby - to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full. You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled. Who knew?
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Freedom is the real foundation of happiness.
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Money doesn't buy happiness, Gytha." "I only wanted to rent it for a few weeks!
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