Tolstoy said it first

On my way home last night I caught Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss on NPR. Anyway, Weiner claimed that all languages had many more words for negative emotional states than positive ones that this was some sort Sapir-Whorf thing). I'm not sure that this is really true—there are actually quite a few words for positive states— but of course Tolstoy said it first:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

And of course along the same lines, here's Richard Dawkins:

True, there are many different ways of being alive - at least ten million different ways if we count the number of distinct species alive today - but, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead!