
Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2005), p. 25.
Prose IV, line 18
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book II
Adeo nihil est miserum nisi cum putes, contraque beata sors omnis est aequanimitate tolerantis.
Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2005), p. 25.
“Who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate?”
Quis est enim tam compositae felicitatis ut non aliqua ex parte cum status sui qualitate rixetur?
Prose IV, line 12
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book II
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision
Context: "Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen."He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your Spaceland phonographs, from which I caught these words, "Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is none else beside It."
The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
“But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?”
Source: Sense and Sensibility
Prometheus
Poems (1851), Prometheus
Townson v. Tickell (1820), 3 B. & A. 36.
“No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.”
Max Müller, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood
Misattributed