Happiness Quote by Andrew Greeley

Greeley’s line lands because it refuses the melodrama people tend to project onto priesthood: repression, loneliness, secret misery. He answers that cultural script with a calm, almost stubborn normalcy. “No regrets” isn’t triumphal; it’s a preemptive rebuttal to an audience he knows is waiting for either scandal or confession. The repetition of “have been and am” reinforces continuity, a long-view satisfaction that reads like testimony without turning preachy.

The real pivot is the near-comic twist at the end. After denying loneliness, he doesn’t pivot to martyrdom or heroic sacrifice; he admits the opposite problem: not too little human connection, but too little quiet. “I could have used a bit more solitude” is a small, disarming complaint that humanizes the collar. It also hints at the messy reality of ministry as constant demand: parish politics, pastoral care, institutional obligations, the social labor of being perpetually “on.” His subtext is that the priest’s risk isn’t isolation so much as erosion of interior life.

Context matters: Greeley was a public-facing priest, sociologist, and novelist, a figure who lived in the churn of media and controversy while remaining inside the institution. The quote quietly asserts an alternative model of vocation: fulfillment without self-mythologizing, companionship without romanticizing celibacy, and a mature recognition that even meaningful work can crowd out the silence it claims to serve.