quotes by Eric Weiner

"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)

"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

"[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)

"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

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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)