Quotes about happiness
page 38

“Remember that there is an abundance of happiness that can be found in the smallest of places.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 32

“Such as diligently search the Scripture shall find that true blessedness, happiness, and salvation is attributed to several signs: sometimes to the fear of God, sometimes to faith, sometimes to repentance, sometimes to love, sometimes to meekness, sometimes to humility, sometimes to patience, sometimes to poverty of spirit, sometimes to holy mourning, sometimes to hungering and thirsting after righteousness; so that if a godly man can find any one of those in himself, he may safely and groundedly conclude of his salvation and justification, though he cannot see all those signs in him.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A Cabinet of Jewels

Love, Hunger, God, Happiness

“I don't think there's necessarily a story, but there's definitely a theme here. One of my favorite kind of dark jokes is, "How do you make God laugh? You make a plan." Nobody ever makes a plan that they're gonna go out and get hit by a car. A plan almost always has a happy ending. Essentially, every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. I really like the idea of a plan not being seen as having definite outcomes, but more like little wishes.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

On the the title of the Death Cab for Cutie album Plans, as quoted in Mix online (1 January 2006) http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_death_cab_cutie_2/index.html

God, Happiness, Cars, Idea

“Punk: I'm not gonna have you sit here and belittle me. Say I've lost sight? I've lost sight of things, John? The reason I say I'm gonna take that and walk out is because I don't fit a certain mold. Because I am the underdog, and that's exactly what you've lost sight of. Earlier in this ring, you mentioned great wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero and you said they used to look at you and say that the kid couldn't hang. And now you stand here and look at me as the kid that can't hang. John, I was hanging off of your gangster car, WrestleMania 22, as it rolled down in Chicago, Illinois, and I stood there in a suit looking as ridiculous as [points to Vince McMahon] that man looks right now in his suit, holding a phony Tommy gun, and I said to myself someday, I'm not gonna be standing out there watching you in the ring; I was gonna be in the ring watching you go down to CM Punk. And now here we are in your hometown of Boston. And now next week, we'll be back there in my hometown—Chicago, Illinois. And this… this is the part where I talk 'em into the building. See, you are the one that's lost sight, and I apologize for raising my voice because I'm not that guy. But when you stand here and tell me that I've lost sight, when you, the 10-time Champion who stands for hustle, loyalty and respect; who, from Boston, Massachusetts, lives and breathes these red colors, the same colors as your beloved Red Sox, who also portray themselves as the underdog, I'm sure just like the Bruins portray themselves as the underdog. Just like the Patriots think they're the underdog! Hey, how about those Celtics? Are they the underdogs too? Here's what you've lost sight of, John, and I'm really happy that your father and your wife are sitting in the front row so they can hear it!
John Cena: That's the last time I'm gonna tell you, man, ease up.
Punk: What you've lost sight of is what you are, and what you are is what you hate. You're the 10-time WWE Champion! You're the man! You, like the Red Sox, like Boston, are no longer the underdog! You're a dynasty. You are what you hate. You have become the New York Yankees! [John immediately punches Punk, who scoots out of the ring, grabs the contract, and goes up the ramp. Points respectively to Vince and John] You're Steinbrenner, and you might as well be Jeter! Mr. 3000, I'm the underdog! [John's music plays for fourteen seconds] Turn it off! Turn the music off because I have something to say, and I'm positive that everybody here wants to hear it, and everybody sitting at home has their DVRs fired up because they wanna hear it! I'm glad you just punched me in the face, John. I'm glad it went down this way because it hit me like a bolt of lightning—exactly why I no longer wanna be here, why I wanna leave. It's because I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you. I'm just tired. So ladies and gentlemen of the WWE Universe, Vince, John, Sunday night, say goodbye to the WWE Title, say goodbye to John Cena, and say goodbye to CM Punk! [Rips up the contract] I'll go be the best in the world somewhere else.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

July 11, 2011
WWE Raw

Hate, Happiness, World, Music

“Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.”

Anatole France book The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Les amants qui aiment bien n'écrivent pas leur bonheur.
La Bûche [The Log] (November 30, 1859)
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)

Love, Happiness, Lovers, For Him

“I am every day more convinced that happiness in Heaven is for those who know how to be happy on earth.”

Josemaría Escrivá (1902–1975) Spanish theologian

#1005
The Forge (1987)

Happiness

“The Bible is a treasure. It contains enough to make us rich for time and eternity. It contains the secret of happy living. It contains the key of heaven. It contains the title-deeds of an inheritance incorruptible, and that fadeth not away. It contains the pearl of great price. Nay, in so far as it reveals them as the portion of us sinful worms, it contains the Saviour and the living God Himself.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 30.

God, Happiness, Secret, Time

“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Practical Reason

Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

Happiness

“It is because I know all that science can bring to the world that I shall continue my efforts to ensure that it contributes to the happiness of all men, whether they be white, black, or yellow, and not to their annihilation in the name of some divine mission or other.”

Frederic Joliot-Curie (1900–1958) French scientist

[Pierre Biquard, translated by Geoffrey Strachan, Frédéric Joliot-Curie: the man and his theories, Eriksson, 1966, 129]

Men, Happiness, World, Effort

“He was carried away by that mania of the storyteller, who never knows which stories are more beautiful—the ones that really happened and the evocation of which recalls a whole flow of hours past, of petty emotions, boredom, happiness, insecurity, vanity, and self-disgust, or those which are invented, and in which he cuts out a main pattern, and everything seems easy, then begins to vary it as he realizes more and more that he is describing again things that had happened or been understood in lived reality.”

Italo Calvino book The Baron in the Trees

The Baron in the Trees (1957), Chapter 16; English translation: Archibald Colquhoun (1959).

Happiness, Beauty, Reality, Past

“I would write, edit, rewrite and re-edit the text. However, I still felt that I was miles away from the ideal version of the story born and still alive in me. I ran towards it with all my might and when I thought I had finally captured it, it would slip away from me and disappear. It looked more like an everlasting vision of an oasis in the mind of the thirsty pilgrim wandering in the desert. Finally, I realised I would never be able to record it in a way that makes myself completely happy with it. I had felt this earlier, but did not want to acknowledge the feeling, I did not want to feel defeated. Now I know - unless the writer suffers, goes through difficulties and finally, feels beaten, like me; if he writes the way he himself wants to write, if he wins over the story, he is dead and finished, as a writer… So, in a nutshell, the writer faces the possibility to die after finishing each of his/her works. However, it is better not to use that possibility until the end…”

Miho Mosulishvili book A Big She-Bear

Source: A Big She-Bear (2013), p. 3

Happiness, Way, Feeling, Suffering

“Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and the benevolent forecast to [create a park], will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"The Basin of the Columbia River" in Picturesque California (1888-1890); reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 22
1880s

Love, Men, Happiness, Lovers

“Perfect happiness is keeping yourself alive, and only actionless action can have this affect.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Ch. 18 (Martin Palmer/Elizabeth Breuily, Penguin Publishing 1996)

Happiness, Perfection

“[Girls] study under the paralyzing idea that their acquirements cannot be brought into practical use. They may subserve the purposes of promoting individual domestic pleasure and social enjoyment in conversation, but what are they in comparison with the grand stimulation of independence and self- reliance, of the capability of contributing to the comfort and happiness of those whom they love as their own souls?”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Written in 1852, as quoted in ch. 87.
The Female Experience (1977)

Love, Happiness, Pleasure, Soul

“The American child is a highly intelligent human being — characteristically sensitive, humorous, open-minded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy, and healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Lucky indeed is the grown-up who manages to carry these same characteristics into adult life. It usually makes for a happy and successful individual.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Deeds Rather Than Words (1963)

Life, Happiness, World, Intelligence

“That house with its remoteness and the islands going down like soft gongs all the time into the amazing blue, and I shall never, never ever forget a youth spent there, discovered by accident. It was pure gold. But then of course …youth does mean happiness, it does mean love, and that's something you can't get over.”

Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer

About the pre-WWII days in Kalami on Corfu (1975), as quoted in Amateurs in Eden (2011) by Joanna Hodgkin, p. 6

Love, Happiness, Youth, Time

“… as a matter of fact it is nice to paint a happy picture after a sad one. I think there is a kind of loneliness in a lot of them which I don't think about as the fact that I'm lonely and therefore I paint lonely pictures, but I like kind of lonely things anyhow; so if the forms express that to me, there is a certain excitement that I have about that.... What I try to do is to create the painting so that the overall thing has the particular emotion; not just the forms in it.... in other words, there's a particular static or heavy form that can have a look to it, an experience that translated through the form; so then it does have a mood. And when that is there, well then it becomes it becomes a painting whereas all the other pictures that have far more interesting shapes and so on, don't become that to me.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

n.p.
1960's, Living Art, 1963

Happiness, Sadness, Mood, Thinking

“The Universalists think they are very charitable. Why? Because they send all to heaven, whether they are good or evil, saints or sinners. Murderers, drunkards, and all classes of society are to dwell together in heaven. And what a heaven it would be!—Methodists contending against Baptists, and Baptists against Methodists, Presbyterians against Quakers, Roman Catholics against Protestants, and Nothingarians against Sectarians, and Sectarians against Nothingarians; and then add to the whole catalogue of contending sects drunkards, blasphemers, whoremongers, murderers, and every species of wicked beings, all jumbled up together. Oh, what a happy place! Brother Kimball says—"And all of them with a revolver and bowie knife at their sides."”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 7:88 (Aug. 28, 1859).
Who goes to heaven

Happiness, Thinking, Evil

“Jivamukti Yoga is a path to enlightenment through compassion for all beings. Jivamukti is a Sanskrit word that means to live liberated in joyful, musical harmony with the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us—we belong to the Earth. Let us celebrate our connection to life by not enslaving animals and exploiting the Earth, and attain freedom and happiness for ourselves in the process. For surely, the best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others. Go vegan!”

Sharon Gannon (1951) American yoga teacher

Simple Recipes for Joy (2014)

Life, Happiness, Music, Way

“Most advocates of the nonphysical self have been happy enough with the immortality payoff not to obsess about the incoherence it carries with it.”

Alexander Rosenberg (1946) American philosopher

The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011)

Happiness

“Even in a pointless universe, pointless happiness and pleasures are surely preferable to pointless suffering.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 307

Happiness, Pleasure, Suffering, Universe

“I sat on my bed and I said to God: You've taken her, but you haven't got me yet. I know Your cunning. It's You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You're a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don't want Your peace and I don't want Your love. I wanted something very simple and very easy: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair (1951)

Love, God, Hate, Happiness

“It is not in the bright, happy day, but only in the solemn night, that other worlds are to be seen shining in their long, long distances. And it is in sorrow — the night of the soul — that we see farthest, and know ourselves natives of infinity, and sons and daughters of the Most High.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 556.

Happiness, World, Soul, Daughters

“That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776. This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, but confined the doctrine of equality to the assertion that "All men are created equally free and independent." It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. But these thoughts can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. He said, "Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man." Again, "The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth…". And again, "For as they have a power every man in his natural state, so upon combination they can and do bequeath this power to others and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine." And still again, "Democracy is Christ's government in church and state."”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1638.
1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, Men, Happiness, Democracy

“Happiness: The art of living happily is to forget the past which no longer exists, not to be worried about the future which has not come yet, and to live the present movement mindfully and wisely. All we have is here and now.”

Thich Nhat Tu (1969) Vietnamese philosopher

Buddhist Socteriological Ethics: A Study of the Buddha’s Central Teachings (1999)

Happiness, Art, Past, Future

“At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people.”

Anton Chekhov book Gooseberries

Gooseberries (1898)

Happiness, People, Personality

“Everyone thinks I'm Jewish. I'm not. Last year I got a call: "Happy Hanukkah." I said "Ma, I'm not Jewish."”

Joy Behar (1942) US comedian, writer and actress

Longstanding Behar joke about how her Italian-Catholic persona is mistaken as being Jewish. As reported in The Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2008/04/20/in_the_swirl_of_the_view_a_stabilizing_force/?page=3 (April 20, 2008) page 3. Url accessed on December 12, 2008.

Happiness, Thinking

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 2, ch. 1
The End of the Affair (1951)

Pain, Happiness, Sense

“Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)

Happiness, Justice

“Isn't it better to be alone than pretend you're someone else? Be you. Find you. Be happy with that.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

InStyle magazine (2009)

Happiness

“Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Life of Monica (1642).

Death, Happiness, Soul, Drawing

“Just as the purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger, not greed, so the sex instinct is designed for the propagation of the species according to natural law, never for the kindling of insatiable longings. Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will follow you after the astral body is torn from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered. Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing within all the tributary rivers of the senses. Small yearnings are openings in the reservoir of your inner peace, permitting healing waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don't kick you around.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

Hunger, Happiness, World, Peace

“O Memory! noble power! thy reign is here.
Strange destiny, how thus, from age to age,
Doth man complain of that which he has lost.
Still do departed years, each in their turn,
Seem treasures of happiness gone by:
And while mind, joyful in its far advance,
Plunges amid the future, still the Soul
Seems to regret some other ancient home
To which it is drawn closer by the past.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

Happiness, Age, Home, Soul

“Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)

Happiness, Forgiveness

“There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860), Behavior

Love, Life, Happiness, Way

“Dialogue in Hell:
Fourth Dialogue
There are tremendous populations riveted to labor by poverty, as they were in other times by slavery. What difference, I ask you, do your fictions make to their happiness? Your great political movement has after all only ended in the triumph of a minority privileged by chance as the ancient nobility was by birth. What difference does it make to the proletariat bent over in its labor, weighted down by the heaviness of its destiny, that some orators have the right to speak, that some journalists have the right to write? You have created rights which will be purely academic for the mass of the people, since it cannot make use of them. These rights, of which the law permits him the ideal enjoyment and necessity refuses him the actual exercise, are the people only a bitter irony of defeat.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Happiness, People, Law, Exercises

“Most of the avoidable suffering in life springs from our attempts to escape the unavoidable suffering inherent in the fragmentary nature of our present existence. We expect immortal satisfactions from mortal conditions, and lasting and perfect happiness in the midst of universal change. To encourage this expectation, to persuade mankind that the ideal is realizable in this world, after a few preliminary changes in external conditions, is the distinguishing mark of all charlatans, whether in thought or action.”

Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

"The Genealogy of Hitler", section 1, The Poisoned Crown (1944)

Life, Happiness, World, Spring

“In the New World, happiness is enforced.”

Peter Porter (1929–2010) British poet

"In the New World Happiness is Allowed", in The Cost of Seriousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) p. 28.

Happiness, World

“Happiness and suffering, however extreme, are mental events. The mind depends upon the body, and the body upon the world, but everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter. This fact offers ample opportunity to make the best of bad situations—changing your perception of the world is often as good as changing the world—but it also allows a person to be miserable even when all the material and social conditions for happiness have been met. During the normal course of events, your mind will determine the quality of your life.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), p. 204

Life, Happiness, World, Suffering

“Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Life of Frederick the Great, Bk. XVI, ch. 1.
1860s

Happiness, People, Books, History

“In vain she told herself that he was unworthy any woman's trust and love, still the unconquerable sentiment that once made her happiness now remained to become her torment.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Love, Happiness

“I want you as the dream,
Not the reality.
That clumsy good-bye kiss could fool me.
But looking back over my shoulder
at you happy without me.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

Happiness, Dreams, Fools, Kiss

“Epicurus, the great teacher of happiness, has correctly and finely divided human needs into three classes. First there are the natural and necessary needs which, if they are not satisfied, cause pain. Consequently, they are only victus et amictus [food and clothing] and are easy to satisfy. Then we have those that are natural yet not necessary, that is, the needs for sexual satisfaction. … These needs are more difficult to satisfy. Finally, there are those that are neither natural nor necessary, the needs for luxury, extravagance, pomp, and splendour, which are without end and very difficult to satisfy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 346
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Pain, Happiness, Food, Nature

“Now, there is a genuine social justice which proceeds not from the principle of equality, but from the principle: Suum cuique — to each his own. It is true that to deprive the workman of his just wage is not only a sin, but a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. When one hinders social advance by putting barriers in the way of the diligent and the talented, one not only commits a personal injustice, but damages the common good of the whole nation, which always requires a genuine elite of ability and the contribution of extraordinary brainpower in every walk of life. And it would be socially unjust if a few individuals or certain groups had so much material wealth that, in consequence of this concentration of property and income, other classes had to live not only in povery, but in misery. Whoever lives in real abundance has a Christian duty to assist those living in wrechedness. Before we proceed, however, let us affirm that the notion of misery is different from that of poverty. Péguy has already drawn the distinction between pauvreté and misère. To live in misery means to suffer genuine physical privation: to know cold and hunger, to have no proper dwelling, to be dressed in rags, to be unable to secure medical attention. The poor, by contrast, have the necessities of life, but scarcely any more. They can borrow books, no doubt, but cannot buy them; they can hear music on the radio, but cannot afford a ticket to a concert; they cannot indulge in little extras of food and drink, but should, by self-discipline, be able to save a little. The poor have, therefore, the normal material preconditions for happiness — unless plagued by acquisitiveness or even envy, which has become a political force in the same measure as people have lost their faith. The fact that there are happy poor (alongside unhappy rich people) is beside the point. Demagogues know how to stir up terrible and murderous unrest even among the happy poor, as has been demonstrated clearly by the history of the left from Marat to Marx to Lenin to Hitler.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Pgs 53-54
The Timeless Christian (1969)

Life, Hunger, Happiness, People

“Everything you tell me in your last letter, which is to say that to spend more time with me they will give up going to Paris, fills me with the greatest pleasure... I find myself much better, and I hope to be back where I was before... I am happy to be better to receive my most beloved travelers. This improvement I owe to Molina.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to Javier (his only son), from Madrid, Summer of 1827; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 401 – note 15
1820s

Happiness, Pleasure, Hope, Travel

“I am now pretty far advanced in life, and all my views are centered in the Happiness and well-fare of my children; you will, therefore, find from me every Indulgence which you have a right to expect from an affectionate Parent.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Letter to his son, George Mason V. (8 January 1783)

Life, Happiness, Children, Parent

“As you know, very recently the secretary of state proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes — of being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust. The secretary of state, in attempting to justify his continued devotion to the man who sold out the Christian world to the atheistic world, referred to Christ's Sermon on the Mount as a justification and reason therefore, and the reaction of the American people to this would have made the heart of Abraham Lincoln happy. When this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent, proclaimed to the American people that Christ on the Mount endorsed communism, high treason, and betrayal of a sacred trust, the blasphemy was so great that it awakened the dormant indignation of the American people.
He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of national honesty and decency in government.”

Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957) Wisconsin politician

Speech in Wheeling, West Virginia (9 February 1950), as quoted at Civics Online http://www.civics-online.org/library/formatted/texts/mccarthy.html

Happiness, People, World, Communication

“I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop the film, either from their harassment campaign that didn't work on the theatre owners, or going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, to all the things that have been said on television. It's only encouraged more people to go and see it. We are happy to announce that the efforts of the small-minded few have failed miserably.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

On the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 breaking box office records. — Zap2it.com (27 June 2004) http://www.zap2it.com/movies/go?path=/movies/news/story&general_id=22014 2004, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Happiness, People, Effort

“So you say there are spaces, opening wide?
Oh believe me, there's day longer than nights.
And you could be happy, if only you'd try.
But you don't try. No you don't try.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

Happiness, Night

“Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

There's No Such Place As Far Away (1978)

Happiness, Birthday, Flying, Birthday

“To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey's tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna's smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory.
He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart.
The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three he has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mark and swirling skirts.
But these days he has become unviable. Unfeasible. Condemned goods. His children deride him. They long to be everything that he is not. He has watched them grow up to become clerks and bus conductors. Class IV non-gazetted officers. With unions of their own.
But he himself, left dangling somewhere between heaven and earth, cannot do what they do. He cannot slide down the aisles of buses, counting change and selling tickets. He cannot answer bells that summon him. He cannot stoop behind trays of tea and Marie biscuits.
In despair he turns to tourism. He enters the market. He hawks the only thing he owns. The stories that his body can tell.
He becomes a Regional Flavour.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 230-231.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, Men, God, War

“The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber, who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.
The fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as ourselves is so well established, that it will not be necessary to weary the reader by many details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals. Courage and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered and easily turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly inherited.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", pages 39-40 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=52&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Pain, Happiness, Children, Pleasure

“Ah, Chloris! could I now but sit
As unconcern'd as when
Your infant beauty could beget
No happiness or pain!
When I the dawn used to admire,
And praised the coming day,
I little thought the rising fire
Would take my rest away.”

Charles Sedley (1639–1701) English politician

Poem: Child and Maiden http://www.bartleby.com/106/81.html

Pain, Happiness, Beauty

“We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.”

William J. Locke book The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905), p. 97.

Happiness, People, History, Wealth

“The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call "following your bliss."”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth (book), p.193

Happiness, People, Way, Feeling

“I've argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn't go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The red's become green but the goals remain the same. And there's no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we're all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

How Hard Can It Be? The World According to Clarkson Volume 4 (2010)

Happiness, Age, Way, Light

“Life in the past was happy for mortals as compared to now. Men led a life, gentle in mind with sweet-speaking wisdom, most beautiful of mortals.”

Cratinus (-500–-422 BC) Old Athenian Comic poet

Cheirones ("The Chirons")

Life, Wisdom, Men, Happiness

“Punk: Don't stop on account of me. [Starts singing "Happy Birthday" to Rey's daughter, who is scared]. Rey, you look scared, but I assure you I'm not out here to hurt you, and I'm not out here to hurt your family. In fact, I'm happy that we're all here – my family and yours. And today's a big day, we all need to celebrate the occasion, and it doesn't get any bigger that WrestleMania, Rey, so that's exactly why I wanna challenge you to a match at WrestleMania. I also wanna challenge you to a match tonight. And I don't mean later in the show, Rey. I mean now. I mean, as in, right now!
Rey: Come on Punk. This ain't the time
Punk: Don't be sad. Aaliyah, since it's your birthday, sweet, innocent little Aaliyah, I'll tell you what. As my birthday present to you, I'll let you shut your eyes while I reduce your daddy to tears and make him beg for my mercy. And Dominik. You're such… you're all grown up now, aren't you? We watched you grow up before our very eyes, but I don't think you ever heard your father squeal like a pig from somebody repeatedly stomping his surgically repaired knees, so it's okay if you plug your ears. And beautiful, voluptuous Angie. Now I'm sure you and your loving husband Rey have shared the best of times. But look at me. I promise you, after I do what I'm going to do to your husband, it will be the worst of times. So feel free to cup your hand over your mouth to muffle the screams. What's the matter, Rey? Don't you wanna fight me in front of your family? No? Are you afraid that your family's gonna watch you get hurt? You're a coward! I know it; deep down inside, Dominik knows it; your wife has always known; and now on her 9th birthday, your sweet innocent little Aaliyah knows it. All these people here know it, Rey, you're a coward! What's it gonna take? Huh, Rey? Where's Giant-Killer Rey Mysterio at? [Crowd chants "619"] Where's your 619, huh, Rey? Where's the ultimate underdog, Rey? Rey, where's your machismo? Where's your machismo, Rey?! I'll tell you where, Rey. Your machismo, your courage – you never had it. What's it gonna take, Rey? Huh? Rey, I'll even drop down to your level, Rey. [Gets down on his knees] Come on, Rey! So, you're turning me down? You won't fight me? What's it gonna take, Rey? [Gets up] What's it gonna take, Rey?! Not now?! Not now?! [Slaps Rey across the face] [Rey then walks away very frustrated with his family. ] Come on, Rey! Come on, now! There he is, ladies and gentlemen! There's your superhero!
Striker: He's got no alternative but to protect his family.
Punk: Watch him take his walk of shame! But one more thing, sweet little princess Aaliyah… [Sings "Happy Birthday" to her in a disturbing type way. ]”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

March 12, 2010
Friday Night SmackDown

Love, Happiness, People, Sadness

“Thank you for your kind invitation. As someone who has enjoyed visiting Russia in the past and can also claim a degree of Russian ancestry, it would make me happy to say yes. However, as a gay man, I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly. Perhaps, when and if circumstances improve, I'll be free to make a different choice.”

Wentworth Miller (1972) British-born American actor

Seth Adam (GLAAD's Senior Manager of Communications), Miller rejects Russian film festival invitation; 'As a gay man, I must decline' http://www.glaad.org/blog/wentworth-miller-rejects-russian-film-festival-invitation-gay-man-i-must-decline, Glaad.org, 21 Aug 2013.

Love, Women, Men, Happiness

“Our situations are arranged by higher agents to allow us to become tired of trying to manipulate the material energy. Due to not being properly appreciative of the beauty of relationship with the Lord, humankind is given a temporary arena in which to act out our desires. This environment is designed to frustrate, disgust, and disappoint us, to make us contemplative and introspective. Ultimately it is meant to drive us away from the temporary world in favor of that which is eternal. This is arranged for us to finally realize that our happiness lies not in dabbling with the material energy but in serving the Lord unconditionally, thus becoming whole again.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 4: Fire and Brimstone, Horns and Tail, p. 66

Happiness, World, Beauty, Disappointment

“…the leaders of an independent Scotland will be only too happy to trade away that independence in return for admission to the fleshpots of Brussels for themselves and their families, goes without saying; they have the example of Westminster to copy.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

To Scotland, with Love. p. 124.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Happiness, Family

“The sun has only ever shone for me in France (it certainly did that!). I have got used to beating the streets of Paris, happy beyond words dreaming of a life 125 years long - with the Louvre radiant in the distance. (Chagall couldn't go back to Paris because of the outbreak of the first World War in 1914). Having ended up in the Russian provinces, <>.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote from a letter to Sergei K. Markovsky, 1915; as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 149
1910's

Life, War, Happiness, World

“I settled everything with Mrs. Grey, while you were putting on your bonnet," replied he. "She said I might have her consent, if I could obtain yours; and I asked her, in case I should be so happy, to come and live with us — for I was sure you would like it better. But she refused, saying she could now afford to employ an assistant, and would continue the school till she could purchase an annuity sufficient to maintain her in comfortable lodgings; and, meantime, she would spend her vacations alternately with us and your sister, and should be quite contented if you were happy. And so now I have overruled your objections on her account. Have you any other?"
"No — none."
"You love me then?”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

said he, fervently pressing my hand.
"Yes."
Source: Agnes Grey (1847), Ch. XXV : Conclusion

Love, Happiness, School, Sister

“There is no more perfect picture on the earth, or within the imagination of man, than a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms a child, the fruit of love.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Love, Happiness, Imagination, Perfection

“I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self- government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Holmes (22 April 1820)
1820s

Happiness, World, Faith, Hope

“It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not happiness — a word that is central in Austen's novels but is seldom used in James's universe. What James's characters gain is self-respect.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

On Henry James and his novels
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Happiness, Sense, Universe, Victory

“I loved, I was loved, my health was good, I had a great deal of money, and I spent it, I was happy and I confessed it to myself.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 10, p. 274
Referenced

Love, Money, Happiness, Health

“… happiness is not for this world — a conviction that cannot be too soon acquired : it will destroy a thousand vain expectations, dissipate the most perplexing of our illusions — the early knowledge that life is but a trial, whose triumph is hereafter, and this earth a place appointed for that sorrow and patient endurance which is gradually fitting us for a better and a happier state.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Life, Happiness, World, Knowledge

“For each new morning let there be flow of love. Let there be light of happiness in every direction.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Walking the Path of Compassion (2015)

Love, Happiness, Light, Good Morning

“The happy coincidences between life’s requirements and nature’s choices of parameter-values might be just a series of flukes, but one could be forgiven for beginning to suspect that something deeper is at work. That suspicion is the first deep root of anthropic reasoning.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

p, 125
"Multiversality" (2013)

Life, Happiness, Nature

“It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.”

Cary Grant (1904–1986) British-American film and stage actor

Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Life, Happiness, Law, Feeling

“Yellow can paint happiness and also pain... Every color harbors its soul within, delighting or repelling and inspiring me.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

undated quotes

Pain, Happiness, Color, Soul

“There is a Precious Mountain
Even the Seven Treasures cannot compare
A cold moon rises through the pines
Layer upon layer of bright clouds
How many towering peaks?
How many wandering miles?
The valley streams run clear
Happiness forever!”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Happiness, Mountain

“It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and whats happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there — with your eyes open — and lived to see it.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Love, Happiness, Way, Reality

“When she’d been with us a month or so, Lisa Cody got a diagnosis. She was a sociopath too. She was happy, because she wanted to be like Lisa in all things. Lisa was not so happy, because she had been the only sociopath among us. “We are very rare,” she told me once, “and mostly we are men.””

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Men, Happiness

“When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Ellie Dunn, Act II
1910s, Heartbreak House (1919)

Happiness, Peace, Heart

“A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven hath a summer’s day.”

Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) British writer

In Praise of Lessius’s Rule of Health, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Happiness, Way, Soul, Summer

“Why count the days, when even one days is enough for a man to know all happiness?”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Happiness

“A traveller returns home after a long journey, and he sees the old city gate and hears the women and children on both banks of the river talking his own dialect. Ah, is this not happiness?”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"Thirty-three Happy Moments"

Women, Happiness, Children, Travel

“We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Il faut rire avant que d'être heureux, de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.
Aphorism 63; Variant translation: We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.
Les Caractères (1688), Du Coeur

Happiness, Fear

“But this instinctive falsification of the world view is only of limited effectiveness. Again and again the ressentiment man encounters happiness, power, beauty, wit, goodness, and other phenomena of positive life. They exist and impose themselves, however much he may shake his fist against them and try to explain them away. He cannot escape the tormenting conflict between desire and impotence. Averting his eyes is sometimes impossible and in the long run ineffective. When such a quality irresistibly forces itself upon his attention, the very sight suffices to produce an impulse of hatred against its bearer, who has never harmed or insulted him. Dwarfs and cripples, who already feel humiliated by the outward appearance of the others, often show this peculiar hatred—this hyena-like and ever-ready ferocity. Precisely because this kind of hostility is not caused by the “enemy's” actions and behavior, it is deeper and more irreconcilable than any other. It is not directed against transitory attributes, but against the other person's very essence and being. Goethe has this type of “enemy” in mind when he writes: “Why complain about enemies?—Could those become your friends—To whom your very existence—Is an eternal silent reproach?” (West-Eastern Divan). The very existence of this “being,” his mere appearance, becomes a silent, unadmitted “reproach.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Other disputes can be settled, but not this! Goethe knew, for his rich and great existence was the ideal target of ressentiment. His very appearance was bound to make the poison flow.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Hostility, Happiness, World

“I shall always love the Mexican people for what the happiness they gave us that day. There was nothing that was too much for them to do.”

Natacha Rambova (1897–1966) American film personality and fashion designer

On her wedding day in Mexico, p. 61
Rudolph Valentino: A Wife's Memories of an Icon (2009)

Love, Happiness, People

“To have just finished repaying all one's debts. Ah, is this not happiness?”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"Thirty-three Happy Moments"

Happiness

“It seems that it was the Jews who had entered the has not been a happy one.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 290

Happiness

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Pain, Happiness, People, Education

“Politics is the art of human happiness.”

H. A. L. Fisher (1865–1940) British politician

Source: A History of Europe (1934), Ch. 31.

Happiness, Art

“If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.
They're right. It does.
However much you beg it to stop.
It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.
It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life…
All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.
Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.
Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.
And then the world turns…
And somebody falls off…
And oh God it's such a long way down.
Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller…
Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.
We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.
Trying to measure how far we have to fall.
No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives…
Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.
"Time's a great healer."
"At least it was quick.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The world keeps turning.
Oh Alec—
Alec's dead."
Swamp Thing (1983–1987)

Life, Women, Men, God

“The thing about happiness is that it doesnt help you to grow; only unhappiness does that. So I'm grateful that my bed of roses was made up equally of blossoms and thorns. I've had a privileged, creative, exciting life, and I think that the parts that were less joyous were preparing me, testing me, strengthening me.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On strength, p. 307.
Autobiography

Life, Happiness, Thinking, Help

“At the end of the day, happiness is derived from love — love for others and others’ love for you. When I say “love” I do not mean simply romantic love, though that is obviously one of the greatest wellsprings of true happiness. I mean the love one feels from friends, and the love for places and things that brings people together for shared purpose.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, A Free People Must Be Virtuous (2018)

Love, Happiness, People, Feeling

“The true woman will not be exponent of another, or allow another to be such for her. She will be her own individual self, — do her own individual work — stand or fall by her own individual wisdom and strength stand or fall by her own individual wisdom and strengh… She will proclaim the "glad tidings of good news" to all women, that woman equally with man was made for her own individual happiness, to develop every power of her three fold-nature, to use, worthily every talent given to her by God, in the great work of life.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Statement of Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1856), partially quoted in The Right to Vote (2001) by Claudia Isler, p. 50, and in Perfecting the Family : Antislavery Marriages in Nineteenth-Century America (1997) by Chris Dixon, p. 144

Life, Wisdom, Women, God

“The early graced of Grecian song,
The fragrant myrtle tree;
For it doth speak of happy love,
The delicate, the true.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Poetical Portrait I
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Love, Happiness, Tree

“Clerks spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In Mallrats the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types. The year that Clerks played at the Cannes Film Festival, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers. Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mallrats-1995 of Mallrats (20 October 1995) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Happiness, Sense, Time

“In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.”

Sarah Orne Jewett book The Country of the Pointed Firs

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 15

Life, Happiness, Secret

“But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863) American biblical scholar

A Visit from St. Nicholas (1823).

Happiness, Christmas, Night

“So many people are waiting for their happiness to come. It's not here yet, but they are waiting. It's like standing in a line waiting for your bus. One day, people say, my ship will come. One day, I'll make it. One day, I'll be happy. Ships come and go, and they wait for theirs. They think about jumping on other people's ships. They think everything. Yet, incredibly enough, there has always been someone who has pointed out the simple fact that what we are looking for is inside.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Honolulu, Hawaii, December 4, 1991
1990s

Happiness, People, Thinking, Waiting

“No autocracy can lead people to believe that they are living in harmony and happiness.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei. “ The Olympics Are a Propaganda Show http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,531883,00.html.” Spiegel, January 29, 2008. 2000-09, 2008

Happiness, People