“It takes so little to make a child happy, that it is a pity in a world full of sunshine and pleasant things, that there should be any wistful faces, empty hands, or lonely little hearts.”

Source: Little Women

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: "All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one."
"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."

Source: Magic Rises

Happy Thought.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)

May 1, 1783, p. 513
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Source: Blue Pastures

"Little Things" in the Myrtle (1845). This poem came to be published uncredited as a children's rhyme and hymn in many 19th century magazines and books, sometimes becoming variously attributed to Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Daniel Clement Colesworthy, and Frances S. Osgood, but the earliest publications of it clearly are those of Carney, according to Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson, as well as Familiar Quotations 9th edition (1906) edited by John Bartlett, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington, and The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), ed. Fred R. Shapiro.

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass