Too soon, too late, so many missed opportunities - you’ve got to recognize luck when you see it. He has a lot of friends who waste time waiting for a miracle that will redeem them, transform the life they perceive as a melancholy pencil sketch into a richly-hued oil painting, friends blind to moments of happiness while waiting for that miracle to arrive. What’s more, you’ve got to be able to stand being lucky. Many of his friends do everything they can to destroy it because they’re sure that fulfillment could be worse than failure. They’re driven by the conviction that nothing is more like hell than heaven, that heaven exists only until they get there, or comes into existence only once they’ve left. They’re not convinced that something was right until it’s over.
— A Happy Man by Hansjörg Schertenleib
If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
— a Montesquieu quote in Is Facebook making us sad?
