“I Love The Happiness Of My Devotee. That Happiness Is (Itself) The Very (And Most Prior) Consciousness Of every conditionally Manifested being. And Happiness (Itself) Is The Conscious Light Of the world. I Am Happiness (or Love-Bliss) Itself.”

Letter, June 8, 1762 [to an unnamed recipient], p. 103
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
Context: Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Source: Red Mars (1992), Chapter 2, “The Voyage Out” (p. 85)

Source: No Longer Human

The Power of Positive Living (1992), p. 63

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity

Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (2010), p. 138.