I'm my worst critic, and I like the fact that I can listen to myself now and make fun of myself, listen, make changes - 'Oh, man, that's messed up. Okay, I need to work on that; I need to work on this.'
I think we all mistake certain things for happiness. I think we mistake comfort for happiness and we mistake pleasure for happiness, and entertainment for happiness, when really these are just things we use as proxies for our happiness. We use them to cheer us up or try and achieve brief happiness, when really happiness is something much more profound and long lasting and exists within us.
My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.
You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being.
People are afraid of trying something new, of failing even before they start. My point is, what is the worst that can happen? You will fail and friends who warned you will say 'I told you so!' So you made a mistake - and will hopefully make many more. But hey! The real tragedy is not the mistake you make, but not learning from it.
I don't want to risk my personal sanity or happiness, or my family, or the love of my life. That's a mistake. And I think a lot of people make that mistake, they're always kind of, like, seeking out the next thing that's gonna happen.
The worst mistake anyone can make is to perceive anyone else as lesser. The deeper you look into other souls - and writing is primarily an exercise in doing just that - the clearer people's inherent dignity becomes.
We ask for happiness but what we get is unhappiness. We all put our efforts into trying to be happy but we make a fundamental mistake: happiness is not related to the effort, happiness is related to not asking for it.
The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!
The tragedy of too many people is that they cannot allow happiness just to be there; they cannot leave it alone. Their sense of who they are and of what their destiny is cannot accommodate happiness. So they are drive to find ways to sabotage it.
Happiness is the ultimate goal...The mistake we make is not going for happiness first. If we did, everything else would follow.
When I look at what the world does and where people nowadays believe they can find happiness, I am not sure that that is true happiness. The happiness of these ordinary people seems to consist in slavishly imitating the majority, as if this were their only choice. And yet they all believe they are happy. I cannot decide whether that is happiness or not. Is there such a thing as happiness?
Money cannot buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
Here is why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. ...I beg of you, pretend you are a dog like me and LISTEN to other people rather than steal their stories.
You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself.
We should practice by showing one another love and helping one another. It is a mistake to pursue happiness and to seek to the avoid suffering by deceiving and humiliating other people. We must try to achieve happiness and eliminate suffering by being good-hearted and well-behaved.