"Happiness can exist only in acceptance"

This quote, allegedly from George Orwell, got me looking for it… and I haven’t found it. 

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) lived from 1903-1950. His books have been made available – free – online since he died. The University of SA in Australia wrote:  “Under Australian copyright laws, copyright in literary works of authors, who died before 1955, has expired. These works are now within the ‘public domain’ in Australia and this is why the University is able to reproduce such works on this site.” As an Australian resident I downloaded the books I would love to have – and read – and searched through them for this quote. 

It didn’t exist. At least, I couldn’t find it. So I was online looking again. 

An interesting short bio of Orwell was printed on the SoftPanorama website but didn’t include the quote in the bio. At the end of the page was a list of “Interesting quotes” which, under “H” alphabetically, included this quote with no connection to where it came from. 

The question/answer page ofYahoo had this question posted from… whoever: 

“Does anyone know the origin of the quote ‘happiness can only exist in acceptance’? Who said it? George Orwell? Denis de Rougemont? Neither? Was it written in a book? Said in an interview? I love this quote but I can't seem to find out anything about it other than EVERYONE loves to use it!” 

This resulted in what I saw as a truthful answer:

“Having done a very thorough search I can tell you that it is nowhere within Orwell's writings!
Acceptance is the third and final stage of the Party's programme in ‘1984’, so if Orwell did say it, it has to be seen as very ironic. It appears on t-shirts and posters etc but what Orwell really stood for was the questioning of authority rather than passive acceptance. “ ~ Monkey69Puzzler , 1 year ago (2015ish) 

Many quote websites provided pictures with this alleged Orwell quote, but none of them gave any info about where they got it from.

http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/george-orwell/59795 

http://classiclit.about.com/od/orwellgeorge/a/George-Orwell-Quotes.htm

https://thecriticalthinker.wordpress.com/tag/1984/

http://www.searchquotes.com/search/Orwell_1984/

http://paulmacdowell.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/the-hopeless-resurgence.html 

Geckoandfly had a list of Orwell quotes. The writer for the website, NTY, attended Curtin Uni in WA, and is now based in Malaysia. I wrote to him for info on the quote. He quickly provided me with information about a book which he’d quoted from which was not written by Orwell but which acknowledged the quote to Orwell. Still there was no real answer about who said that quote.  

In the past I have been grumpy about so many quote pages which will print a quote with no speaker acknowledged. Now, in this particular case, I feel a bit sad that people – including me – have just taken some words we’ve heard or seen, added the name which was floating around with the quote, and we haven’t done our own search of truth. Until I can actually find this quote which is now attributed to George Orwell, I have reached a decision for this particular one. 

It didn’t exist.