Eric Weiner > Quotes

“Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“[Happiness is] a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.”
― Eric Weiner

“So the greatest source of happiness is other people- and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we're really wealthy, to an estate. We think we're moving up, but really we're walling off ourselves.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“We help other people because we can, or because it makes us feel good, not because we're counting on some future payback. There is a word for this; love.”
― Eric Weiner

“There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.”
― Eric Weiner

“I've spent most of my life trying to think my way to happiness, and my failure to achieve that goal only proves, in my mind, that I am not a good enough thinker. It never occurred to me that the source of my unhappiness is not flawed thinking but thinking itself.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“Rule number one: wear loose clothing.

No Problem.

Rule number two: no alcohol for the next three days.

Slight problem. I'll miss my evening glass of wine but figure I can go for three days without and compensate later.

And the last rule: absolutely no coffee or tea or caffeine of any kind.

Big problem. This rule hits me like a sucker punch and sure would have knocked me to the floor had I not been sitting there already. I'm eying the exits, plotting my escape. I knew enlightenment came at a price, but i had no idea the price was this steep. A sense of real panic sets in. How am I going to survive for the next seventy-two hours without a single cup of coffee?”
― Eric Weiner

“Part of positive psychology is about being positive, but sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate. Some people don't want to be happy, and that's okay. They want meaningful lives, and those are not always the same as happy lives.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“Only a fool or philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“I've always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is fining the right corner.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“For me, a place unvisited is like an unrequited love. A dull ache that- try as you might to think it away, to convince yourself that she really wasn't the right country for you- just won't leave you in peace.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“As I railed on and on, I became increasingly energied and excited by my own misery and misanthropy until I reached a kind of orgasm of negativity.'... The Brits don't merely enjoy misery, they get off on it.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“We are shaped not only by our current geography but by our ancestral one as well. Americans, for instance, retain a frontier spirit even though the only frontier that remains is that vast open space between the SUV and strip mall. We are our past.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“I would not have done anything differently. All of the moments in my life, everyone I have met, every trip I have taken, every success I have enjoyed, every blunder I have made, every loss I have endured has been just right. I am not saying that they were all good or that they happened for a reason...but they have been right. They have been okay. As far as revelations go its pretty lame, I know. Okay is not bliss or even happiness. Okay is not the basis for a new religion or self help movement. Okay won't get me on Oprah, but okay is a start and for that I am grateful. Can I thank Bhutan for this breakthrough? It's hard to say […] It is a strange place, peculiar in ways large and small. You lose your bearings here and when that happens a crack forms in your armor. A crack large enough, if you're lucky, to let in a few shafts of light.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“That's why we feel so disoriented, irritated even, when these touchstones from our past are altered. We don't like it when our hometown changes, even in small ways. It's unsettling. The playground! It used to be right here, I swear. Mess with our hometown, and you're messing with our past, with who we are. Nobody likes that.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“Every country has its cocktail-party question. A simple one-sentence query, the answer to which unlocks a motherlode of information about the person you just met.... In Switzerland it is, Where are you from? That is all you need to know about someone.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“Until the eighteenth century, people believed that biblical paradise, the Garden of Eden, was a real place. It appeared on maps--located, ironically, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now modern-day Iraq.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“And yet, over the years I've met so many people like Jared who seem to be more at home, happier, living in a country on of their birth. ... Not political refugees, escaping a repressing regime, nor economic refugees, crossing a border in search of a better-paying job. The are hedonic refugees, moving to a new land, a new culture, because they are happier there. Usually hedonic refugees have an ephiphany, a moment of great clarity when they realize, beyond a doubt, that they were born in the wrong country.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“And so I do. I have inter course, right there in the Hotel van Walsum dining room. I enjoy it very much, this unhurried dining experience. I sip my beer, stare into space, and, in general, do nothing--until the waiter brings the grilled salmon, indicating that, for now, my inter course is over.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“..there is more to life than just pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it.”
― Eric Weiner

“We need to a new word to describe Swiss happiness.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“Emma has just returned from a visit to her factory. On the floor, she has spread piles of bags. They are everywhere, and they are beautiful. I'm tempted to get naked and roll around in the pile but restrain myself. This is a forgiving place, but even the inhabitants of 1 Shanti Road have their limits.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“Demikian pula halnya, hanya ketidakbahagiaan yang memiliki makna. Itulah sebabnya mengapa kita merasa terpaksa membicarakannya dan punya banyak kata untuk melukiskannya. Kebahagiaan tidak membutuhkan kata-kata.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“All around me I hear the pleasant chortle of Dutch. It sounds vaguely familiar, though I can't imagine why. Then it dawns on me. Dutch sounds exactly like English spoken backward! ...
I wonder if I recorded someone speaking Dutch and played that backward, it would sound like regular English!”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

“God is not an exclamation point. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called “human grace.” Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of this.”
― Eric Weiner