The Language of Happiness
John Ingalls:Happiness is an endowment and not an acquisition. It depends more upon temperament and disposition than environment. It is a state of condition of mind, and not a commodity to be bought of sold in the market. A beggar may be happier in his rags than a king in his purple. Poverty is no more incompatible with happiness than wealth and the inquiry, “How to be happy though poor?” implies a want of understanding of the conditions upon which happiness depends.
Dives was not happy because he was a millionaire, nor Lazarus wretched because he was a pauper. There is a quality in the soul of man that is superior to circumstances and that defiles calamity and misfortune. That man who is unhappy when he is poor would be unhappy if he were rich, and he who is happy in a palace in Paris would be happy in a dug-out on the frontier of Dakota.
There are many unhappy rich men as there are unhappy poor men. Every heart knows its own bitterness and its own joy. Not that wealth and what it brings is not desirable - books, travel, leisure, comfort, the best food and raiment, agreeable companionship - but all these do not necessarily bring happiness and may coexist with the deepest wretchedness, while adversity and penury, exile and privation are not incomparable with the loftiest exaltation of the soul.
Josh Billings:
If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will not find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles – on her own nose all the time.
Lloyd Douglas:
It was probably a mistake to pursue happiness; much better to create happiness; still better to create happiness for others. The more happiness you created for others the more would be yours – a solid satisfaction that no one could ever take away from you.
Charles Spurgeon:
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.
Thomas Drefer:
If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time. Today should always be our most wonderful day.
Emily Dickinson:
I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
To live is not merely to breath, it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties, of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence. The man who has lived longest is not the man who has counted most years, but he who has enjoyed life most.
Eddie Cantor:
Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you’re going and why.
Pascal:
Happiness is nether within us only, nor without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.
Marcus Aurelius:
Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself.
Democritus:
Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold,
The feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart - Helen Keller
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves. – Helen keller
Happiness is …
… the conviction that we are loved .. in spire of ourselves
… tranquility of mind
… enjoying the realities as well as the frivolities of life
… made up of minute fractions .. countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling
… a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp; but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
Martha Washington:
I have learned too much of the vanity of human affairs to expect any felicity from public life. But I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be. For I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.
Jane Porter:
Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected ‘till it is shared.
Carl Jung:
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure darkness, and the word “happiness” would lose its meaning if it were balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
Albert Camus:
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Helen Keller:
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller:
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.
posted by Victor Lai @ 8:18 AM
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