Top 60 Meik Wiking Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport. It is where the rich walk and where they use bikes. We should create cities where rich and poor meet as equals: in parks, on the sidewalks, on public transport.”

— Meik Wiking

2. “Our lives are not the days that have passed, but the days we will remember forever.”

— Meik Wiking

3. “Perhaps it is not a coincidence that everything that has to do with hygge makes us feel happy, calm, and safe.”

— Meik Wiking

4. “Live life today like there is no coffee tomorrow.”

— Meik Wiking

5. “Hygge is humble and slow. It is choosing rustic over new, simple over posh and ambience over excitement. In many ways, hygge might be the Danish cousin to slow and simple living.”

— Meik Wiking

6. “Objects are more than their physical properties, they hold an emotional value and a story.”

— Meik Wiking

7. “Hygge is about appreciating the simple pleasures in life and can be achived on a shoestring budget.”

— Meik Wiking

8. “Take time to enjoy the journey toward your goal while also being mindful that achieving your goal will not fulfill you completely.”

— Meik Wiking

9. “Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about things. It is about being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe, that we are shielded from the world and allow ourselves to let our guard down.”

— Meik Wiking

10. “Harmony: It’s not a competition. We already like you. There is no need to brag about your achievements.”

— Meik Wiking

11. “But hygge is about making the most of what we have in abundance: the everyday. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin said it best: “Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”

— Meik Wiking

12. “One of the reasons for the high level of happiness in Denmark is the good work–life balance, which allows people to make time for family and friends.”

— Meik Wiking

13. “So perhaps we need to consider how to turn the idea of the pursuit of happiness into the happiness of the pursuit. People on a quest for something they find meaningful – whether that is building a boat or growing the perfect tomato – tend to be happier; they know that happiness is the by-product of the process and not a pot of gold at the finish line.”

— Meik Wiking

14. “A city is successful not when it’s rich but when its people are happy. Creating bikeability and walkability shows respect for human dignity. We’re telling people, ‘You are important – not because you’re rich, but because you are human.’ If people are treated as special, as sacred, even, they behave that way. We need to walk just as birds need to fly. Creating public spaces is one way to lead us to a society that is not only more equal but also much happier.”

— Meik Wiking

15. “If I cannot ask people directly how happy they are, I ask them how satisfied they are with their social relationships, because that gives me the answer.”

— Meik Wiking

16. “Happy memories can be bittersweet, but they also assure us that we are valued as people, that we have deep connections with other people and that we have led a meaningful life.”

— Meik Wiking

17. “Hygge is only possible if it stands in opposition to something which is not hygge. It is essential for the concept of hygge that it constitutes an alternative to everything that is not hyggeligt in our everyday lives.”

— Meik Wiking

18. “Following these discoveries, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis stated that a culture’s language both reflects how people experience their world and affects their actions in it. Would we still feel love if we had no word for it? Of course we would. But what would the world be like if we had no word for marriage? Our words and language shape our hopes and dreams for the future – and our dreams for the future shape how we act today.”

— Meik Wiking

19. “We were silent, tired, and happy, and it was pure hygge.”

— Meik Wiking

20. “See experiences as an investment in happy memories and in your personal story and development.”

— Meik Wiking

21. “What makes me proud to be part of the human race – with all our faults and failures – is our endless curiosity and imagination.”

— Meik Wiking

22. “Relax. Just for a little while. It is about experiencing happiness in simple pleasures and knowing that everything is going to be okay.”

— Meik Wiking

23. “One of the most popular and traditional ones is La Glace, Denmark’s oldest confectionery shop, established in 1870.”

— Meik Wiking

24. “Time spent with others creates an atmosphere that is warm, relaxed, friendly, down-to-earth, close, comfortable, snug, and welcoming. In many ways, it is like a good hug, but without the physical contact. It is in this situation that you can be completely relaxed and yourself. The art of hygge is therefore also the art of expanding your comfort zone to include other people.”

— Meik Wiking

25. “No people can be truly happy if they do not feel that they are choosing the course of their own life,” states the World Happiness Report 2012 – and it also finds that having this freedom of choice is one of the six factors that explain why some people are happier than others.”

— Meik Wiking

26. “When you stay in one, there is a closer connection to nature and to each other. A cabin forces you to live more simply and slowly. To get out. To get together. To enjoy the moment.”

— Meik Wiking

27. “Adults are not supposed to play. We are supposed to stress, have worries and be too busy dealing with life’s problems. But according to a study undertaken by Princeton University and led by Alan Krueger, Professor in Economics and Public Affairs there, we are happiest when we are involved in engaging leisure activities.”

— Meik Wiking

28. “The key to surviving four seasons in one day is layers. You should always bring another cardigan. You can’t hygge when you are cold.”

— Meik Wiking

29. “I see photos as the key to a vault of memories. If the key was lost, I fear that the memories would be sealed off forever. They bear witness to how time has passed. As I see them, memories resurface, or snapshots of emotions, then a whole range of other connections start to be made. I look at the pictures and feel grateful for every time someone pressed down on the shutter.”

— Meik Wiking

30. “Remember: Danes are direct descendants of Vikings, so we enjoy watching things burn: bonfires, candles, villages. It’s all good.”

— Meik Wiking

31. “In other words, if a city is designed in a way that makes a long drive to work necessary, we harm the social health of that city. If a lot of people cycle, it’s probably an indication that you live in a healthy neighborhood. This is something that should be seriously considered in urban planning if we want to ensure neighborliness and trust among locals.”

— Meik Wiking

32. “To paraphrase one of the greatest philosophers of our time-Winnie-the-Pooh-when asked how to spell a certain emotion, “You don’t spell it, you feel it.”

— Meik Wiking

33. “All books are hyggelig, but classics written by authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens have a special place on the bookshelf. At the right age, your kids may also love to cuddle up with you in the hyggekrog and have you read to them. Probably not Tolstoy.”

— Meik Wiking

34. “Special photos should get special treatment. So take active steps to preserve your photos and to protect yourself from digital amnesia. Bring your photos out of the digital universe and into real print. The act of being proactive in preserving your digital photos to make them last for decades and for the next generation might well be one more happy memory.”

— Meik Wiking

35. “Almost 60 percent of Danes say the best number of people for hygge is three to four.”

— Meik Wiking

36. “When we discover that our happiness does not rest on the foundation of money, we have found a true treasure.”

— Meik Wiking

37. “It is wearing your pajamas and watching Lord of the Rings the day before Christmas, it is sitting in your window watching the weather while sipping your favorite tea, and it is looking into the bonfire on summer solstice surrounded by your friends and family while your twistbread slowly bakes.”

— Meik Wiking

38. “When choosing what to do, take into account what you are most likely to remember in ten years’ time.”

— Meik Wiking

39. “We are not paying taxes, we are investing in our society. We are purchasing quality of life. The key to understanding the high levels of well-being in Denmark is the welfare model’s ability to reduce risk, uncertainty, and anxiety among its citizens and to prevent extreme unhappiness.”

— Meik Wiking

40. “In this way, achieving hygge would not be possible without all the bustle and turmoil leading up to Christmas. All the money, stress, work, and time being sacrificed in the preparations for Christmas.”

— Meik Wiking

41. “So, to all you introverts out there, do not feel embarrassed or boring for being a person who prefers things that are hygge.”

— Meik Wiking

42. “Link purchases with good experiences. I had saved money for a new favorite chair but waited until I had published my first book to get it. That way, the chair reminds me of something that was an important accomplishment for me. We can apply the same thing to that special sweater or that pair of nice woolen socks. Save for them – but wait until you have that really hyggelig experience: you want to be reminded of it when you pull them on.”

— Meik Wiking

43. “It’s somewhere we sit by ourselves to rest while experiencing ultimate feelings of coziness and warmth, and its somewhere we spend time with our dear ones to intensify our feeling of togetherness.”

— Meik Wiking

44. “We are social creatures, and the importance of this is clearly seen when one compares the satisfaction people feel in relationships with their overall satisfaction with life. The most important social relationships are close relationships in which you experience things together with others, and experience being understood; where you share thoughts and feelings, and both give and receive support. In one word: hygge.”

— Meik Wiking

45. “We were all tired after hiking and were half asleep, sitting in a semicircle around the fireplace in the cabin, wearing big sweaters and woolen socks. The only sounds you could hear were the stew boiling, the sparks from the fireplace, and someone having a sip of mulled wine. Then one of my friends broke the silence. “Could this be any more hygge?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes,” one of the women said after a moment. “If there was a storm raging outside.” We all nodded.”

— Meik Wiking

46. “It doesn’t cost money to light a room correctly – but it does require culture.”

— Meik Wiking

47. “For the ambitious among us, once we reach our goal we soon formulate another to pursue. This is the hedonic treadmill. We continuously raise the bar for what we want or feel we need in order to be happy – and the hedonic treadmill spins faster with ambition. In other words, the downside to being ambitious is a constant sense of dissatisfaction with our achievements.”

— Meik Wiking

48. “Some of the best decisions we make come from that inner voice that says, “Why not?” That says, “Andiamo.” So much disappointment arises from what is desired but not chosen.”

— Meik Wiking

49. “The most successful countries in the twenty-first century will be those that most efficiently turn wealth into well-being – and this also applies to the individual.”

— Meik Wiking

50. “How hyggelig a food is also lies in its preparation. The rule of thumb is: the longer a dish takes to cook, the more hyggelig it is.”

— Meik Wiking