A few days ago, I realised I’ve accumulated a lot of quotes from my note-taking – whether that be from my Kindle or just on Notion. For the sake of organisation, I’m starting a new series on this blog where I find some common threads between quotes and group them together as food for thought.

Today’s theme: happiness.

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Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari
“Alright, the secret of happiness is simple: find out what you truly love to do and then direct all of your energy towards doing it. If you study the happiest, healthiest, most satisfied people of our world, you will see that each and every one of them has found their passion in life, and then spent their days pursuing it. This calling is almost always one that, in some way, serves others. Once you are concentrating your mental power and energy on a pursuit that you love, abundance flows into your life, and all your desires are fulfilled with ease and grace.”

Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”

Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”

Scott Adams, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
“Happiness has more to do with where you are heading than where you are.”

Derek Sivers, Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
“Happiness is the real reason you’re doing anything, right? Even if you say it’s for the money, the money is just a means to happiness, isn’t it? But what if it’s proven that after a certain point, money doesn’t create any happiness at all, but only headaches? You may be much happier as a $1 million business than a $1 billion business.”