"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Happiness

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Insight & Reflection

This reflection on happiness by Charles Dickens resonates across generations. It highlights a fundamental truth about human nature: our continuous search for meaning in happiness is what ultimately defines our character and our path forward.

About Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and journalist. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

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Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by Charles Dickens

"To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart."

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"It is a essential truth that he who inspires courage in a single soul has led a monumental campaign — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress."

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More about Happiness

"When I came into office, people said, 'Billionaire? How do they live? What do they eat? How do they sleep?' Today, they see me on the subway coming uptown. A couple of people say hi, some people smile and nod. Some people just sleep. It's not an issue."

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"In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it."

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