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About this quote

What does it mean?
We often fail to notice happiness while experiencing it, realizing it only in hindsight.
In plain terms
You dont notice happiness until it is gone.
What can you take from it?
Awareness of joy often comes too late.

Where it applies

  • life review
  • gratitude practice
  • therapy

Putting it to work

  • practice mindfulness
  • keep journals
  • reflect daily

Questions to consider

  • When did you realize you were happy?
  • Can you be aware of joy now?

Another view

It ignores moments of immediate gratitude.

More from Nikos Kazantzakis

  1. Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thi…

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  2. How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to f…

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  3. To cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.

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