Samuel Johnson Quotes

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.

Try not to think too often, you'll only hurt yourself

And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

For many, negative thinking is a habit, which over time, becomes an addiction... A lot of people suffer from this disease because negative thinking is addictive to each of the Big Three - the mind, the body, and the emotions. If one doesn't get you, the others are waiting in the wings.

Nobody can be happy. You could have moments of happiness, moments of joy. But life is very difficult. Unless you're a total idiot. Then you can be happy.

The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

When I believed my thoughts I suffered.

Why do people spend their time being sad when they could be happy?

I'm a morning "spinner." That's usually when my brain is thinking too much and I don't necessarily see things positively. So I sit myself down and remember that I'm making it up.

Joy, happiness ... we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections ... to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is not.

I worry too much.

I don't like being left to my own thoughts.

Now, I'm so relaxed that I have to make myself nervous. I feel better when I'm second and third guessing myself over everything. I play with the mice in my head, all the time.

Ever since I was a little girl, I've worried too much. It always bothers me because sometimes you end up worrying more about the worry and you are not resolving things that are right there in front of you. I have been like that all my life, and it's hard to change.

I'm a clown, which could be a public health role. I'm really interested in moving our society away from a society needing Xanax and Prozac, and that is really feeling depressed, to one that is celebrating, and so I find just walking around in colorful clothes, people smile.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it's your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can't package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

It's wonderful to feel supported, but there's a lot of negative energy towards me as well. So I ignore it, to be honest. If I started to read it all it would completely mess up my head.

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

I am living for every day and trying to have less fear, less worry. But I have always worried about everything; it's in my nature. It's the thing that makes me suffer the most.

I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.

I just think too much sometimes.

There's always going to be people saying negative and positive things. If you let all that into you, and you're always contemplating that and thinking about that, I'm sure that can get to you. I try not to do that.

It's really easy to catastrophise everything. I'd like to think as I've gotten older, I do a bit better with that.