A Quote by Iris Murdoch

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.

Iris Murdoch

Quote Topics

Being Being Busy Busy Consciousness Everyday Happiness Lively Matter Mode Most Ordinary Self Unconcerned

Quote Author

Iris Murdoch
Irish - Novelist
July 15, 1919 - February 8, 1999

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.

Iris Murdoch

The discoveries of the last couple decades are showing that properties of a self do actually inhere in matter, that matter seems to have properties of self-organization and life, even intelligence, consciousness. I can't say that science has proved these things, but it at least suggests the possibility. As we re-invest the world with sacredness, "spiritual" comes to mean something very different. If only a human being has these qualities, then spiritual work is inner. It's all about your own consciousness.

Charles Eisenstein

Happiness is not something you have in your hands; it's something you carry in your heart. Happiness is one thing that multiplies by division. Happiness is that peculiar sensation you acquire when you are too busy to be miserable. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Ayn Rand

...just being ordinary in and of itself is and expression of divinity; the truth of one's real self can be discovered through the pathway of everyday life.

David Hawkins

The belief that happiness has to be deserved has led to centuries of pain, guilt, and deception. So firmly have we clung to this single, illusory belief that we've almost forgotten the real truth about happiness. So busy are we trying to deserve happiness that we no longer have much time for ideas such as: Happiness is natural, happiness is a birthright, happiness is free, happiness is a choice, happiness is within, and happiness is being. The moment you believe that happiness has to be deserved, you must toil forevermore.

Robert Holden

I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

John Updike

Happiness and peace of mind are a matter of consciousness. We must create the harmony we desire. As we raise our level of consciousness we become more in tune with the true nature of our being. This type of awareness is not an accident; it comes from study and an understanding that we are truly creative.

Bob Proctor

What I believe is that people have many modes in which they can be. When we live in cities, the one we are in most of the time is the alert mode. The 'take control of things' mode, the 'be careful, watch out' mode, the 'speed' mode - the 'Red Bull' mode, actually. There's nothing wrong with it. It's all part of what we are.

Brian Eno

The student should bear in mind that the very essence of consciousness is constantly to identify itself with the Not-Self, and as constantly to re-assert itself by rejecting the Not-Self. Consciousness, in fact, consists of this alternating assertion and negation - "I am this" - "I am not this." Hence consciousness is, and causes in matter, the attracting and repelling that we call a vibration.

Arthur E. Powell

The progressive growth of the finite consciousness of man towards this Self, towards the universal , the eternal, the infinite, in a word his growth into spiritual consciousness by the development of his ordinary ignorant natural being into an illumined divine nature, this is for Indian thinking the significance of life and the aim of human existance.

Sri Aurobindo

When it's time to get dressed, put on your clothes. When you must walk, then walk. When you must sit, then sit. Just be your ordinary self in ordinary life, unconcerned in seeking for Buddhahood. When you're tired, lie down. The fool will laugh at you but the wise man will understand.

Linji Yixuan

Consciousness comes first; it is the ground of all being. Everything else, including matter, is a possibility of consciousness. And consciousness chooses out of these possibilities all the events we experience.

Amit Goswami

If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies... Do it in the 'closed' mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the 'open' mode... because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.

John Cleese

Now, when ordinary people attempt to find happiness, I am not sure whether the happiness is really happiness or not. I study what ordinary people do to find happiness, what they struggle for, rushing about apparently unable to stop.

Zhuangzi

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.