A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

The saying contrasts an outward-directed life—seeking fulfillment in possessions, status, pleasures, or other people—with an inward turn in which a person discovers a more stable ground of meaning. In a Kierkegaardian key, the “outside” suggests the aesthetic or merely sensate orientation that treats happiness as something to be acquired externally. The eventual “turn inward” points to inwardness: self-examination, responsibility, and the discovery that genuine fulfillment depends on the state of the self (and, for Kierkegaard, ultimately one’s relation to God) rather than on changing external circumstances. The quote thus frames happiness less as luck or acquisition than as an existential task of becoming a self.