Quotes by W. Béran Wolfe

“Nearly every human being is looking for happiness, but very few know what happiness is. Nevertheless if you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness, as if it were a collar stud that has rolled under the dressing-table. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself, nor will he be seeking it among the nebulous wastes of metaphysics. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day.”

“Happiness is no apple that you can peel and eat.”

“Happiness is a quality and an attribute of the good life. The more you try to define it the less you know about it. It is as ineluctable as electricity, as evanescent as melody, as indefinable as health, as variable as speed, time, matter, and the other fictions on which life itself is built. Happiness knows no standards and no limits.”

“For it is our thesis that living happily is a fine art that nearly everyone who possesses an iota of intelligence, courage, and a sense of humor can learn.”

“The art of being a complete, and happy, human being may be likened to a process of creative self-sculpture. This term best describes the art of attaining poise and satisfaction, of gaining the courageous hopefulness and sense of freedom, the objective self-esteem that are the essential premises of happiness. Our heritage as human beings is the raw material of the fine art of being human. Every man must take this rock and hew out a design for himself. If he succeeds in this task within the time limit set by nature, he may well consider himself a happy human being.”