Brain Pickings Icon
Brain Pickings

Reads tagged with “happiness”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Happiness as a Moral Obligation
Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Happiness as a Moral Obligation

“It is well to fly towards the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of wings against the windowpanes, is it not?”

read article

Beloved Artist Agnes Martin on Our Greatest Obstacle to Happiness and How to Transcend It
Beloved Artist Agnes Martin on Our Greatest Obstacle to Happiness and How to Transcend It

“No-one knows what your life or life itself should be because it is in the process of being created. Life moves according to a growing consciousness of life and is completely unpredictable.”

read article

What Makes a Good Life: Revelatory Learnings from Harvard’s 75-Year Study of Human Happiness
What Makes a Good Life: Revelatory Learnings from Harvard’s 75-Year Study of Human Happiness

“The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.”

read article

A Placid Ecstasy: Walt Whitman’s Most Direct Reflection on Happiness
A Placid Ecstasy: Walt Whitman’s Most Direct Reflection on Happiness

“What is happiness, anyhow? … so impalpable — a mere breath, an evanescent tinge…”

read article

Meditation Teacher Sharon Salzberg on What Compassion Really Means and How We Can Train Our Attention Toward It
Meditation Teacher Sharon Salzberg on What Compassion Really Means and How We Can Train Our Attention Toward It

How a continuing sense of mutual discovery creates the opening to true compassion.

read article

The Remarkable Love Letters of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger
The Remarkable Love Letters of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

“Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.”

read article

View Full Site

Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, I get a small percentage of its price. That helps support Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction of what it takes to maintain the site, and is very much appreciated