Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Variant: The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Source: Les Misérables
Variant: Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Source: Les Misérables
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Variant: The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Source: Les Misérables
James Saurin (1759–1842) Bishop of Dromore; Irish Anglican bishop
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 270.
“Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)
Context: Love is basic for the very survival of mankind. I’m convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good. He who loves has somehow discovered the meaning of ultimate reality. He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God. Love is the supreme unifying principle of life. Psychiatrists are telling us now that many of the strange things that happen in the [subconscious], many of the inner conflicts are rooted in hate, and they are now saying “Love or perish.” Oh, how basic this is. It rings down across the centuries: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself. We’ve been in the mountain of violence and hatred too long.
“Supreme happiness is gained via contentment.”
Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises
§ 2.42
Yoga Sutras of Patañjali
Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo
Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 <br class="br">Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846) <br class="br">Context: Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man who, like Satan, thought himself, for an instant, equal to God; but who now acknowledges, with Christian humility, that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom... There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
Martin Cecil, 7th Marquess of Exeter (1909–1988) Marquess of Exeter
As of a Trumpet, 1968, p. 43
As of a Trumpet
“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”
George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin
“Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more”
Evolution (1895; 1909)
Context: Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
And the night of death was past.