There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.
Interpretation
Pursuing wealth and productivity should not come at the cost of our happiness.
In this quote, Gilbert K. Chesterton emphasizes that societal pressures to achieve more—whether in terms of wealth, productivity, or status—should not take precedence over individual happiness. He argues that true fulfillment comes from prioritizing joy and satisfaction rather than succumbing to external expectations of success.
In practice
During a motivational speech, one might say this quote to encourage others to reassess their priorities.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
Waiting to be happy limits our brain's potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward.
Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
In order to be happy you need a good dog, a good woman, and ready money.
Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.
Sometimes happiness is a blessing, but generally it is a conquest. Each day's magic moment helps.
We’ve all heard of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In contrast, I realized, happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience we must: anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.
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