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“The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in things great and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Olga did not see this as a theft as much as an equalization of resources: Mrs. Henderson had aggressively accumulated too much of something while her family had acutely too little. At the Henderson wedding, despite all the time and energy spent discussing, procuring, pleating, and angling these napkins, they would go unnoticed. But at Mabel’s, like a black Chanel suit in a sea of knockoff Hervé Léger bandage dresses, they would stop people in their tracks. “¡Qué elegante!” she could hear her Titi Lola saying. She could picture her Tío Richie holding two of them over his chest and saying, “Hey, how many do you think I’d need to make a guayabera?” There would be countless cousins uttering, simply, “Classy,” as they thumbed the fabric between their fingers. This was the least Olga could do, she felt. Why shouldn’t her family get to know the feeling of imported Belgian flax against their laps? Because”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming