Heather H

“The Worldwatch Institute’s 2011 State of Consumption report also found that wealth won’t help you on your way to having a satisfying life and new research shows that there’s even a cut-off point for the amount of income we need to be content. A combined study from the Universities of Warwick and Minnesota found that there was a basic threshold beyond which any extra money added nothing to levels of well-being. The figure is around 197,000 DKK a year (£22,000 or $36,000), after which we apparently get wealthier but less contented.”
― Helen Russell, The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country

“It will always hold true that the under class will not be stirred into action until after the best minds within the upper class have perceived that the latter is no longer able to manage its own tasks.  With the first signs of such weakness, the superseding class rises like a tidal wave.  A society erected upon a class system falls when its structure has been analyzed and become understood.  The middle-class social democrats wished to develop into a bourgeois state; now they have paid in blood for their lack of vision.”
― Aksel Sandemose, A Fugitive Covers His Tracks

“What I mean when I say “Vilnius” is the strength of a people to be the first to vote to leave the Soviet Union in 1991, and the persistence to make that vote mean something.”
― Bronwyn Mauldin, Love Songs of the Revolution

“Danes do have a good work-life balance on the whole. ‘And if we don’t, we usually do something about it. You ask yourself, “are you happy where you are?” If the answer’s “yes” then you stay. If it’s “no”, you leave. We recognise that how you choose to spend the majority of your time is important. For me, it’s the simple life – spending more time in nature and with family. If you work too hard, you get stressed, then you get sick, and then you can’t work at all.”
― Helen Russell, The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country