Whence comes it that a man who within a few months has lost his only son, or who this morning was overwhelmed with law suits and wrangling, now thinks of them no more? Be not surprised; he is altogether taken up with looking out for the boar which his hounds have been hunting so hotly for the last six hours. He needs no more. However full of sadness a man may be, he is happy for the time, if you can only get him to enter into some diversion. And however happy a man may be, he will soon become dispirited and miserable if he be not diverted and occupied by some passion or pursuit which hinders his being overcome by weariness. Without diversion no joy, with diversion no sadness. And this forms the happiness of persons in high position, that they have a number of people to divert them, and that they have the power to keep themselves in this state.
He wanted a woman to hope for happiness through all the pain. Deep, soul-searing pain was his kink.
Quiet continuity of life is the principle of human happiness.
There are three orders of emotions: those of pleasure, which refer to the senses; those of harmony, which refer to the mind; and those of happiness, which are the natural result of a union between harmony and pleasure.--_Chapone._
Romance and novel paint beauty in colours more charming than Nature, and describe a happiness that man never tastes. How delusive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!
Devotion in distress is born, but vanishes in happiness.
Fireside happiness, to hours of ease Blest with that charm, the certainty to please.
In every department one must begin as a child; throw a passionate interest over the subject; take pleasure in the shell till one has the happiness to arrive at the kernel.
Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.
One must take a pleasure in the shell till one has the happiness to arrive at the kernel.
Illa placet tellus in qua res parva beatum / Me facit, et tenues luxuriantur opes=--That spot of earth has special charms for me, in which a limited income produces happiness, and moderate wealth abundance.
One ought to seek out virtue for its own sake, without being influenced by fear or hope, or by any external influence. Moreover, that in _that_ does happiness consist.
These tall and handsome ships, swaying imperceptibly on tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their inactive, nostalgic appearance, don’t they say to us in a speechless tongue: When do we cast off for happiness?
";Happiness equals reality minus expectations."
In deinem Glauben ist dein Himmel, / In deinem Herzen ist dein Gluck=--In thy faith is thy heaven, in thy heart thy happiness.
The greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. The malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may apply to every other course of life,--that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.--_Johnson._
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
There is no mystery about Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in Christ. Pax Vobiscum, p. 56.
Prudence and greatness are ever persuading us to contrary pursuits. The one instructs us to be content with our station, and to find happiness in bounding every wish: the other impels us to superiority, and calls nothing happiness but rapture.
A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.
So how do you count in Happiness? It’s a little different, but just as easy to learn. In Happiness, you count by making a list of five things that make you happy. Do this daily. Some things will appear on your list every day, and some things will be new from one day to the next.
The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
Love which seems so unselfish may become very selfish if we are not on our guard. Do not shut your eyes to what is dark in others, but do not dwell on it except so far as it helps to bring out more strongly what is bright in them, lovely, and unselfish. The true happiness of true love is self-forgetfulness and trust.
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants.
It is God Himself who receives what we give in charity, and is it not an incomparable happiness to give Him what belongs to Him, and what we have received from His goodness alone?--ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.
If happiness ha'e not her seat / And centre in the breast, / We may be wise, or rich, or great, / But never can be blest.
The happiness we owe to ourselves is greater than that which we owe to our surroundings.
Our happiness here is but a foretaste of our blessed life hereafter. We must never forget that. We shall be called away, but we shall meet again.
Great happiness makes one feel so often that it cannot last, and that we will have some day to give up all to which one's heart clings so. A few years sooner or later, but the time will come, and come quicker than one expects. Therefore I believe it is right to accustom oneself to the thought that we can none of us escape death, and that all our happiness here is only lent us. But at the same time we can thankfully enjoy all that God gives us, ... and there is still so much left us, so much to be happy and thankful for, and yet here too the thought always rushes across one's brightest hours: it cannot last, it is only for a few years and then it must be given up. Let us work as long as it is day, let us try to do our duty, and be very thankful for God's blessings which have been showered upon us so richly--but let us learn also always to look beyond, and learn to be ready to give up everything,--and yet say, Thy Will be done.
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Whatever condition we represent to ourselves, if we bring to our minds all the advantages it is possible to possess, Royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king surrounded with all the conditions which he can desire, if he be without diversion, and be allowed to consider and examine what he is, this feeble happiness will never sustain him; he will necessarily fall into a foreboding of maladies which threaten him, of revolutions which may arise, and lastly, of death and inevitable diseases; so that if he be without what is called diversion he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the humblest of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.
Grief is a sweet remembrance of happiness that was.
The happiness of the human race is one of the designs of God, but our own individual happiness must not be made our first or our direct aim.
The regions of eternal happiness are provided for those women who love their husbands the same in a wilderness as in a city; be he a saint, or be he sinner.
Welch Gluck geliebt zu werden: / Und lieben, Gotter, welch ein Gluck!=--What a happiness to be loved! and to love, ye gods, what bliss!
_Morality._--God having made the heavens and the earth, which cannot feel the happiness of their being, he has been pleased to make beings who should know it, and who should compose a body of thinking members. For our members do not feel the happiness of their union, of their admirable intelligence, of the care which nature has taken to infuse into them a mind, and to make them grow and endure. How happy would they be if they could see and feel it. But in order to this they must needs have intelligence to know it, and good will to consent to that of the universal soul. For if, having received intelligence, they used it to retain nourishment for themselves without allowing it to pass to the other members, they would be not only unjust but also miserable, and would hate rather than love themselves, their blessedness as well as their duty consisting in their consent to the guidance of the general soul to which they belong, who loves them better than they love themselves.
In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.
All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness.
The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse.
What can we call ours if God did not vouchsafe it to us from day to day? Yet it is so difficult to give oneself up entirely to Him, to trust everything to His Love and Wisdom. I thought I could say, 'Thy Will be done,' but I found I could not: my own will struggled against His Will. I prayed as we ought not to pray, and yet He heard me. It is so difficult not to grow very fond of this life and all its happiness, but the more we love it, the more we suffer, for we know we must lose it and it must all pass away.
One must be careful in announcing great happiness.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than to consume wealth without producing it.
~Wickedness.~--The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent.--_Racine._
We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely -- at least, not all the time -- but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.
It matters not whether our good-humour be construed by others into insensibility, or even idiotism; it is happiness to ourselves.
The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labours to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.
The pleasure-seeker is not the pleasure-finder; those are the happiest men who think least about happiness.
Heaven is in thy faith; happiness in thy heart.
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
Repose without stagnation is the state most favourable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbation."
No man would become a member of a community in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property, then, is a primary object of the social compact….The legislature, therefore, had no authority to make an act divesting one citizen of his freehold, and vesting it in another, without a just compensation. It is inconsistent with the principles of reason, justice and moral rectitude; it is incompatible with the comfort, peace and happiness of mankind; it is contrary to the principles of social alliance in every free government; and lastly, it is contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. [Commenting on confiscation and redistribution to the needy. Vanhorne’s Lessee v. Dorrance, 2 U.S. 304, 310 (Dall. 1795), Justice William Paterson.]
With all respect to Mr. Jefferson, I would put the pursuit of wisdom ahead of the pursuit of happiness. [ The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1975.]
Ach! aus dem Gluck entwickelt sich Schmerz=--Alas! that from happiness there so often springs pain.
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
They waited, ready, for all those who would call themselves mortals, So that they might praise, as I do, life, that is, happiness.
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
"Such is the present state of man. There remains to him some feeble instinct of the happiness of his primitive nature, and he is plunged in the misery of his blindness and his lusts, which have become his second nature.
The entire grace, happiness, and virtue of= (a young man's) =life depend on his contentment in doing what he can dutifully, and in staying where he is peaceably.
The happiness you wot of is not a hundredth part of what you enjoy.--_Charles Buxton._
Repose and happiness is what thou covetest, but these are only to be obtained by labour.
Knowledge produceth humility; from humility proceedeth worthiness; from worthiness riches are acquired; from riches religion, and thence happiness.
A man's happiness,--to do the things proper to man.
Pour comble de bonheur=--As the height of happiness.
All men are born free and independent, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness. [George A. Peek, Jr., ed., The Political Writings of John Adams , New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1954, p. 96.]
A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system, and encourages propensities destructive to its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation. [ Congressional Record , March 4, 1946.]
Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire qu? velis, et qu? sentias dicere licet=--Such was the happiness of the times, that you might think as you chose and speak as you thought.
If I ventured to speak of God's purpose at all, I should say, that it is not God's purpose to win only the spiritually gifted, the humble, the tender hearted, the souls that are discontented with their own shortcomings, the souls that find happiness in self-sacrifice--those are His already--but to win the intellectually gifted, the wise, the cultivated, the clever, or better still, to win them both. It would be an evil day for Christianity if it could no longer win the intellectually gifted, the wise, the cultivated, the clever, and it seems to me the duty of all who really believe in Christ to show that Christianity, if truly understood, can win the highest as well as the humblest intellects.
In order to make man happy, it must show him that there is a God; that we ought to love him; that our true happiness is to be in him, our sole evil to be separated from him; it must recognise that we are full of darkness which hinders us from knowing and loving him; and that thus, as our duties oblige us to love God, and our lusts turn us from him, we are full of injustice. It must explain to us our opposition to God and to our own good; it must teach us the remedies for these infirmities, and the means of obtaining them. We must therefore examine all the religions of the world from this point of view, and see if there be any other than the Christian which is sufficient for this end.
Life, however short, is made shorter by waste of time; and its progress towards happiness, though naturally slow, is made still slower by unnecessary labour.
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures, its excesses must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.
I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore.
I am as you see me. I am happy and able because I allow myself to be happy. I learned young that being active breeds more activity. That the gift of studying is knowledge. That seeing grants sight. That if you don't feel anger, you won't be angry. Sadness and frustration, even tragedy, are inevitable, but that doesn't mean that happiness isn't there for us, for all of us. My secret is that I choose to be the person that I want to be. That I don't believe in destiny or predetermination, but in choice, and that each of us chooses to be the person we are. Whatever you want to be you can be; whatever you want to do you can do; wherever you want to go you can go. The world, and the life ahead, is ours for the taking. The future is unwritten, and you can make it whatever you want it to be.
Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, / What gay distress! what splendid misery! / Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, / The mind annihilates and calls for more.
Our dreams are a window into our theology. We are a proud people, the inheritors of the American Dream—the pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right. Like bratty, self-involved little kids, we push past the Giver to grab for the gift. Can you see it? We use God for health, wealth, and emotional well-being, and in the process, we miss out on relationship with our heavenly Father.
Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.
Ce qui fait qu'on n'est pas content de sa condition, c'est l'idee chimerique qu'on forme du bonheur d'autrui=--What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.
It is not want of good fortune, want of happiness, but want of wisdom that man has to dread.
~Contentment.~--That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, "I have enough," is the highest attainment of philosophy. Happiness consists, not in possessing much, but in being content with what we possess. He who wants little always has enough.--_Zimmermann._
The most lucrative commerce has ever been that of hope, pleasure, and happiness, the merchandise of authors, priests, and kings.--_Madame Roland._
Said Scopas of Thessaly, "We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things."
A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favourable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty. Life culminates at sixty.
Grata superveniet qu? non sperabitur hora=--The hour of happiness will come the more welcome when it is not expected.
Surely everything is ordered, and ordered for our true interests. It would be fearful to think that anything, however small in appearance, could happen to us without the will of God. If you admit the idea of chance or unmeaning events anywhere, the whole organisation of our life in God is broken to pieces. We are we don't know where, unless we rest in God and give Him praise for all things. We must trust in Him whether he sends us joy or sorrow. If he sends us joy let us be careful. Happiness is often sent to try us, and is by no means a proof of our having deserved it. Nor is sorrow always a sign of God's displeasure, but frequently, nay always, of His love and compassion. We must each interpret our life as best we can, but we must be sure that its deepest purpose is to bring us back to God through Christ. Death is a condition of our life on earth, it brings the creature back to its Creator. The creature groans at the sight of death, but God will not forsake us at the last, He who has never forsaken us from the first breath of our life on earth. If it is His will we may live to serve Him here on earth for many happy years to come. If He takes either of us away, His name be praised. We live in the shadow of death, but that shadow should not darken the brightness of our life. It is the shadow of the hand of our God and Father, and the earnest of a higher, brighter life hereafter. Our Father in heaven loves us more than any husband can love his wife, or any mother her child. His hand can never hurt us, so let us hope and trust always.
How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
Le bonheur ne peut etre / Ou la vertu n'est pas=--Happiness cannot exist where virtue is not.
No real happiness is found / In trailing purple o'er the ground.
As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, "If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.