Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances by Arne Glimcher (20th Century Living Masters)

Arne Glimcher

“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.”

Pathbreaking artist Agnes Martin on our greatest obstacle to happiness and how to transcend it:

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

“It came to me while picking beans, the secret of happiness.”

Gardening and the secret of happiness – wonderful short read:

Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions

Martha Nussbaum

“Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.”

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on the intelligence of the emotions, how storytelling rewires us, and why befriending our neediness is essential for happiness and healthy relationships:

My Antonia

Willa Cather

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

This passage from the Cather classic is possibly the most beautiful formulation of happiness ever committed to words – read it in full at the link:

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness

Russ Roberts

“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.”

The Scottish philosopher’s underappreciated wisdom on happiness and benevolence:

Selected Letters of William Styron

William Styron

“I’ll always hate the stupid and the bat-brained and the petty. But it doesn’t seem nearly so important anymore to hate, as try to understand.”

Sophie’s Choice author and future Pulitzer Prize winner William Styron, at only 24, on happiness and the true measure of maturity in an extraordinary letter to his father:

The Conquest of Happiness

Bertrand Russell

“A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men… of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers, as though they were cut flowers in a vase.”

Bertrand Russell on boredom and why our capacity for “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness – immensely timely read from 1930:

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

Eric G. Wilson

In praise of melancholy and how it enriches our capacity for creativity:

Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness

Epictetus

“Spirited curiosity is an emblem of the flourishing life.”

Timeless wisdom on happiness and the virtuous life from the great Epictetus:

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Sam Harris

“Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated people should condemn, and yet there is more to understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally admit.”

Sam Harris on spirituality without religion and how to cultivate the art of presence as our greatest gateway to happiness – spectacular read:

A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning

Robert Zaretsky

A Life Worth Living — Albert Camus on our search for meaning and why happiness is our moral obligation:

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Rebecca Solnit

“The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration — how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else? … Never to get lost is not to live.”

Rebecca Solnit on how getting lost helps us find ourselves – one of the best things I’ve ever read, soul-expanding beyond words:

Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing

Barry Schwartz

Fantastic read on how to cultivate practical wisdom on our everyday lives and why it matters in our individual and collective happiness

George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals (Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies)

George Eliot

“One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy.”

What George Eliot teaches us about the life-cycle of happiness and why we’re happier when we’re older

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity

Andrew Solomon

“I do not accept subtractive models of love, only additive ones.”

Fantastic read on “horizontal” vs. “vertical” identity and how the power of love both changes us and makes us more ourselves