Two thousand years, one finding
Aristotle in the fourth century BC, Marcus Aurelius in the second, Khayyám in the eleventh, Roosevelt in the twentieth: all of them land on the same uncomfortable result. Happiness does not respond well to being chased. Aristotle locates it in character, Marcus in the quality of your commentary, Thich Nhat Hanh in the manner of travelling, Roosevelt flatly as a by-product. The agreement across that much time and distance is unusual, and it is the strongest argument in the room that they are describing something real rather than something fashionable.
A modern room, and that is the strange part
Every datable line here was written between 1918 and 1998 — eighty years, the narrowest span of any room in the museum. The subject is as old as writing, so the absence of anything ancient is a fact about circulation rather than about philosophy. Older writing on happiness exists in quantity; almost none of it is quotable at poster length, because it arrives with conditions attached. The short, unconditional sentence about happiness is a twentieth-century form.
What is the best quote about happiness?
Eleanor Roosevelt’s — “happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product of a life well lived.” It is the most useful because it tells you where to look instead, which most of the others only imply.
What did Marcus Aurelius say about happiness?
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts,” from the Meditations, written around 170 AD as a private notebook while he was emperor during war and plague — not as advice for anyone else.
Did Thich Nhat Hanh say “There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way.”?
Thich Nhat Hanh used the line, but credited it to the American pacifist minister A. J. Muste — and it appears in a volume of US Senate hearings from 1948, before Thich Nhat Hanh was ordained. It is also, very often, hung on the Buddha; it is nowhere in the Pali canon. It is filed here as attributed to Thich Nhat Hanh, which means widely credited and not traced to a primary source.
Did Aristotle say “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”?
Aristotle never wrote this sentence. It is a translator’s gloss: J. A. K. Thomson slipped it into his 1955 English Ethics of Aristotle. The Greek at Nicomachean Ethics 1099b.29 says only that the point agrees with what was argued earlier. It is filed here as attributed to Aristotle, which means widely credited and not traced to a primary source.
Did Mahatma Gandhi say “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in har…”?
No Gandhi source has been located. The earliest traced appearance is a 1998 parenting book on humour and play, which credits him without a citation. It is filed here as attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, which means widely credited and not traced to a primary source.