Quotes about happiness

page 49

Letter to Richard Price (22 March 1778) regarding Price's pamphlet, Observations on Civil Liberty and the Justice and Policy of the War with America (1776).
Context: The fate of America is already decided — Behold her independent beyond recovery. — But will She be free and happy? — Can this new people, so advantageously placed for giving an example to the world of a constitution under which man may enjoy his rights, freely exercise all his faculties, and be governed only by nature, reason and justice — Can they form such a Constitution? — Can they establish it upon a never failing foundation, and guard against every source of division and corruption which may gradually undermine and destroy it? … It is impossible not to wish ardently that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the world. They may become a model to it. They may prove by fact that men can be free and yet tranquil; and that it is in their power to rescue themselves from the chains in which tyrants and knaves of all descriptions have presumed to bind them under the pretence of the public good. They may exhibit an example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial liberty, and of industry. The Asylum they open to the oppressed of all nations should console the earth. The case with which the injured may escape from oppressive governments, will compel Princes to become just and cautious; and the rest of the world will gradually open their eyes upon the empty illusions with which they have been hitherto cheated by politicians. But for this purpose America must preserve herself from these illusions; and take care to avoid being what your ministerial writers are frequently saying She will be — an image of our Europe — a mass of divided powers contending for territory and commerce, and continually cementing the slavery of the people with their own blood.

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V
Context: A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.

Coming Out Speech (2014)
Context: There are too many kids out there suffering from bullying, rejection, or simply being mistreated because of who they are. Too many dropouts. Too much abuse. Too many homeless. Too many suicides. You can change that and you are changing it. But you never needed me to tell you that. That’s why this was a little bit weird. The only thing I can really say is what I’ve been building up to for the past five minutes. Thank you. Thank for inspiring me. Thank you for giving me hope, and please keep changing the world for people like me. Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you.

Call no man happy till he is dead.
Also attributed to Sophocles in "Oedipus The King".
Hold him alone truly fortunate who has ended his life in happy well-being.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 928–929. Variant translations:

Expressing disenchantment with the "Summer of Love" hippies of San Francisco's famous “hippie haven” i.e., the Haight-Ashbury district, which he visited on August 7, 1967.
Quoted in Dark Horse: The Life and Art of George Harrison, Geoffrey Giuliano, Da Capo Press, , p. 80. http://books.google.com/books?id=0PLygywwfL8C&pg=PA80&dq=%22hideous,+spotty+little+teenagers%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2Z6NT6-RM6Wr2AW8maGMDA&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22hideous%2C%20spotty%20little%20teenagers%22&f=false
Context: I'd thought it would be something like King's Road [London], only more. Somehow I expected them all to own their own little shops. I expected them to all be nice and clean and friendly and happy … (on the contrary, I discovered them to be) hideous, spotty little teenagers.

Toda Raba (1934)
Context: We are not simple people who believe in happiness; nor weaklings who crumple to the ground in distress at the first reverse; nor skeptics observing the bloody effort of marching humanity from the lofty heights of a mocking, sterile wit. Believing in the fight, though we entertain no illusions about it, we are armed against every disappointment.

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Context: In primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform, and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of "due reward" — of good for good and evil for evil — is affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher conception of "no revenge for wrongs," and of freely giving more than one expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of morality — a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support — not mutual struggle — has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up. p. 25
Context: I believe in progress; I believe that happiness is the goal of humanity, and I cherish a higher idea of the Divine Being than those pious folk who suppose that man was created only to suffer. Even here on earth I would strive, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, to bring about that reign of felicity which, in the opinion of the pious, is to be postponed till heaven is reached after the day of Judgment. The one expectation is perhaps as vain as the other; there may be no resurrection of humanity either in a political or in a religious sense. Mankind, it may be, is doomed to eternal misery; the nations are perhaps under a perpetual curse, condemned to be trodden under foot by despots, to be made the instruments of their accomplices and the laughing-stocks of their menials. Yet, though all this be the case, it will be the duty even of those who regard Christianity as an error still to uphold it; and men must journey barefoot through Europe, wearing monks' cowls, preaching the doctrine of renunciation and the vanity of all earthly possessions, holding up before the gaze of a scourged and despised humanity the consoling Cross, and promising, after death, all the glories of heaven.
The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries; it has been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strengthening the weak, binding together the nations through a common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else that its apologists have urged in its praise all this is as nothing compared with that great consolation it has bestowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible sublimity of this symbol.

(KJV)
Variant translations and selections:
Happy is the man that has found wisdom, and the man that gets discernment, for having it as gain is better than having silver as gain and having it as produce than gold itself. It is more precious than corals, and all other delights of yours cannot be made equal to it. Length of days is in its right hand; in its left hand there are riches and glory. Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its roadways are peace. It is a tree of life to those taking hold of it, and those keeping fast hold of it are to be called happy.
Proverbs 3:13-18; New World Translation http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/pr/chapter_003.htm#bk13
Context: My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.

Section 28
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts
Context: Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the "free for all." They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.

Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 2
Context: I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

On the United States Declaration of Independence, and the United States Constitution at the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (4 July 1976)
1970s
Context: The Declaration was not a protest against government but against the excesses of government. It prescribed the proper role of government to secure the rights of individuals and to effect their safety and their happiness. In modern society, no individual can do this all alone, so government is not necessarily evil but a necessary good.
The framers of the Constitution feared a central government that was too strong, as many Americans rightly do today. The framers of the Constitution, after their experience under the Articles, feared a central government that was too weak, as many Americans rightly do today. They spent days studying all of the contemporary governments of Europe and concluded with Dr. Franklin that all contained the seeds of their own destruction. So the framers built something new, drawing upon their English traditions, on the Roman Republic, on the uniquely American institution of the town meeting.

Quoted by Bethanne Patrick for AOL Books in 2006.
Context: For me the most important thing was always that you have something in mind that you want to do, that you enjoy doing, because a lot of people have a job, but they're not happy. I think you have to think about what it is you really want to do in life and pursue that, and do it with fun; have a smile on your face, because then you're happy. You're happy and you can be open, you can be nice with people, and you have a different appearance and feeling of life than when you are in a job you hate. So for me that was always the most important thing.

Prelude to Pt. I, st. 7
The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)
Context: Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,—
'Tis the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 306

Writings on Physics and Philosophy (1994), p. 15
Context: A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, “You look very unhappy”; whereupon I answered fiercely, “How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?”.

The Spirit of Love (1752) http://www.ccel.org/ccel/law/love/files/love1.htm.
Context: Now the Spirit of Love has this Original. God, as considered in himself in his Holy Being, before any thing is brought forth by him or out of him, is only an eternal Will to all Goodness. This is the one eternal immutable God, that from Eternity to Eternity changeth not, that can be neither more nor less nor any thing else but an eternal Will to all the Goodness that is in himself, and can come from him. The Creation of ever so many Worlds or Systems of Creatures adds nothing to, nor takes any thing from this immutable God. He always was and always will be the same immutable Will to all Goodness. So that as certainly as he is the Creator, so certainly is he the Blesser of every created Thing, and can give nothing but Blessing, Goodness, and Happiness from himself because he has in himself nothing else to give. It is much more possible for the Sun to give forth Darkness, than for God to do, or be, or give forth anything but Blessing and Goodness. Now this is the Ground and Original of the Spirit of Love in the Creature; it is and must be a Will to all Goodness, and you have not the Spirit of Love till you have this Will to all Goodness at all Times and on all Occasions. You may indeed do many Works of Love and delight in them, especially at such Times as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your State or Temper or Occurrences in Life. But the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the Spirit of your Life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. For every Spirit acts with Freedom and Universality according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own Life, or be what it is, no more than you need bid Wrath be wrathful. And therefore when Love is the Spirit of your Life, it will have the Freedom and Universality of a Spirit; it will always live and work in Love, not because of This or That, Here or There, but because the Spirit of Love can only love, wherever it is or goes or whatever is done to it. As the Sparks know no Motion but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the Darkness of the Night or in the Light of the Day, so the Spirit of Love is always in the same Course; it knows no Difference of Time, Place, or Persons, but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful Work, equally blessed from itself. For the Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own Blessing and Happiness because it is the Truth and Reality of God in the Soul, and therefore is in the same Joy of Life and is the same Good to itself, everywhere and on every Occasion.

Chapters on Prayer

An Apology for Idlers.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life.

Written statement (September 1937), p. 70
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Context: Our time is distinguished by wonderful achievements in the fields of scientific understanding and the technical application of those insights. Who would not be cheered by this? But let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.
What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living.

Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, lines 550–552 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth)

The Harper, st. 1 (1799)
Context: On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;
No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

Source: Aspects of the Novel (1927), Chapter Five: The Plot
Context: A man does not talk to himself quite truly — not even to himself: the happiness or misery that he secretly feels proceeds from causes that he cannot quite explain, because as soon as he raises them to the level of the explicable they lose their native quality. The novelist has a real pull here. He can show the subconscious short-circuiting straight into action (the dramatist can do this too); he can also show it in its relation to soliloquy. He commands all the secret life, and he must not be robbed of this privilege. "How did the writer know that?" it is sometimes said. "What's his standpoint? He is not being consistent, he's shifting his point of view from the limited to the omniscient, and now he's edging back again." Questions like this have too much the atmosphere of the law courts about them.

At the signing of the United States Constitution, Journal of the Constitutional Convention (17 September 1787).
Constitutional Convention of 1787
Context: Whilst the last members were signing it Doctor Franklin looking towards the President's Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. "I have," said he, "often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun."

Outline of a Morality Without Obligation or Sanction https://www.marxists.org/archive/guyau/1885/morality.htm (1885).
Context: A third equivalent of duty is borrowed from sensibility and not, like the preceding, from intelligence and activity. It’s the growing fusion of sensibilities, and the ever increasing sociable character of elevated pleasures, from which results a kind of duty or superior necessity which pushes us naturally and rationally towards others. By virtue of evolution, our pleasures grow and become increasingly impersonal; we cannot experience enjoyment within our selves as if on a deserted isle. Our milieu, to which we better adapt ourselves every day, is human society, and we can no more be happy outside of this milieu than we can breathe outside the air. The purely selfish happiness of certain Epicureans is a chimera, an abstraction, an impossibility; the true human pleasures are all more or less social. Pure egoism, rather than being an affirmation of the self, is a mutilation of the self.

Its conventional artillery must have been protecting it very well indeed.
2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

1860s, A Liberal Education and Where to Find It (1868)
Context: The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but without remorse.

Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 701.

Thorp Green

Letter to his brother Frank (14 October 1929), published in Robert Oppenheimer : Letters and Recollections (1995) edited by Alice Kimball Smith, p. 136
Context: Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land
Context: So on he went, and on the way he thought
Of all the glorious things of yesterday,
Nought of the price whereat they must be bought,
But ever to himself did softly say
"No roaming now, my wars are passed away,
No long dull days devoid of happiness,
When such a love my yearning heart shall bless."

Letter to (22 August 1774), as published in The Life of John Jay (1833) by William Jay, Vol. 2, p. 345.
1770s, Letter to Lindley Murray (1774)
Context: Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer. Yet so is the fact; and this fact points strongly to the necessity of our being healed, or restored, or regenerated by a power more energetic than any of those which properly belong to the human mind.
We perceive that a great breach has been made in the moral and physical systems by the introduction of moral and physical evil; how or why, we know not; so, however, it is, and it certainly seems proper that this breach should be closed and order restored. For this purpose only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation. In this plan I have full faith. Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.

Context: I just feel so fortunate, you know? … I feel so happy. I feel so different from how I felt when I was closeted, and to have experiences where I meet people who have been touched in some way by just getting to be who I am is such an incredible experience... I'm in a very fortunate place in my life.
I'm a very privileged person to get to talk about issues, particularly those that affect people much, much more vulnerable to me … I feel really grateful to be in a position where potentially I can do little things or whatever I possibly can to help anyone any way I can.

As quoted in "Ellen Page on Being Able to Openly Love Girlfriend Samantha Thomas: 'It's a Beautiful Thing" by Antoinette Bueno, at ET Online (29 September 2015) http://www.etonline.com/news/172955_ellen_page_talks_being_able_to_openly_love_girlfriend_samantha_thomas/

Book I, Ch. 2
My Antonia (1918)
Context: I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Upon The Mother Of The Gods (c. 362-363)
Context: !-- Who is so thick-headed as not to understand that through Hermes and Aphrodite are invoked all things in all places that contain the cause of the universality and various forms of generation, which is the proper subject of my argument? Is not this the Attis, who at first is called insane, and then sane, in consequence of his castration? Insane because he chose for himself the realm of Matter, and superintends the work of generation; but sane because he hath modelled this refuse into Beauty, and hath wrought therein so great a transformation, that no skill or craft of man can imitate the same. But what shall be the conclusion of my theme? Verily a Hymn of praise unto the goddess. --> O Mother of gods and men, assister and colleague of mighty Jove! O source of the Intelligible Powers! Thou that keepest thy course in unison with the simple essences of things intelligible; thou that hast received out of all the universal Cause, and impartest it to the Intelligible world! Goddess, giver of life, Mother, Providence, and Maker of our souls! Thou that lovest the mighty Bacchus; who didst preserve Attis when he was cast forth, and didst recall him to thyself after he had sunk down into the cave of the earth; thou that art the beginning of all Good unto the Intelligible Powers, and that fillest the world with all the objects of Sense, and grantest all good things, in all places, unto mankind! Grant unto all men happiness, of which the sum and substance is the knowledge of the gods; and to the Roman people universally, first and foremost to wash away from themselves the stain of atheism, and in addition to this, grant them propitious Fortune, that shall assist them in governing the empire for many thousands of years to come! To myself grant for the fruit of my devotion to thee — Truth in belief concerning the gods, the attainment of perfection in religious rites, and in all the undertakings which we attempt as regards warlike or military measures, valour coupled with good luck, and the termination of my life to be without pain, and happy in the good hope of a departure for your abodes!

"Robertson Davies" [by Paul Soles]
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Context: Well, I haven't got wealth or fame, but I really think I might say, and I know how dangerous it is to say this — I think I have happiness. And happiness, you know, so many people when they talk about happiness, seem to think that it is a constant state of near lunacy, that you're always hopping about like a fairy in a cartoon strip, and being noisily and obstreperously happy. I don't think that is it at all. Happiness is a certain degree of calm, a certain degree of having your feet rooted firmly in the ground, of being aware that however miserable things are at the moment that they're probably not going to be so bad after awhile, or possibly they may be going very well now, but you must keep your head because they're not going to be so good later. Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement.

Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 2
Context: I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

Speech at the opening ceremony of the State Bank of Pakistan, Karachi (1 July 1948)
Context: We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind.

Rules of the Game: The Style Diaries (2007)
Context: A lot of people make the mistake of trying to defend principles in relationships. My goal is long-term happiness. And I make choices that aren’t going to undermine that goal.

Campbell follows with a quote from Ovid's Metamorposes, "All things are changing; nothing dies..."
Chapter 2
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
Context: The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms... the two are the terms of a single mythological theme... the down-going and the up-coming (kathados and anodos), which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged (katharsis=purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form).

Speech to students at the California Institute of Technology, in "Einstein Sees Lack in Applying Science" http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50A1FFF3F5E1B7A93C5A81789D85F458385F9&scp=4&sq=&st=p, The New York Times (16 February 1931)
1930s
Context: Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it. In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long day's work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations. … It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man's blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavours; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

HongKong, (2013)
Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door
Context: Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door wants all of us to enjoy family harmony and a happy life. We have the interests of all sentient beings at heart, we work for social peace and stability, we want the country to be strong and prosperous and the people to be healthy. Whatever humans do, the Heaven is watching. Though the heart cannot be seen, it can be kind, pure, compassionate and loving. The beauty and health of our heart can be a guide in our everyday lives, work and learning, allowing us to use the compassionate heart of Guan Yin Bodhisattva to love every single being, to live our days well, to look at the bright side of things with no worries and illnesses, to be able to resolve karmic conflicts, to be liberated from suffering, to eliminate karmic obstacles, to embark on the path to the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss and ascend to the Four Sagely Realms - this is Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door.

Identity (1998), p 146

The Departure, st. 3
The Day-Dream (1842)

"Robertson Davies" [by Paul Soles]
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Context: Well, I haven't got wealth or fame, but I really think I might say, and I know how dangerous it is to say this — I think I have happiness. And happiness, you know, so many people when they talk about happiness, seem to think that it is a constant state of near lunacy, that you're always hopping about like a fairy in a cartoon strip, and being noisily and obstreperously happy. I don't think that is it at all. Happiness is a certain degree of calm, a certain degree of having your feet rooted firmly in the ground, of being aware that however miserable things are at the moment that they're probably not going to be so bad after awhile, or possibly they may be going very well now, but you must keep your head because they're not going to be so good later. Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement.

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.

The Story of Utopias, Chapter Twelve (1922).
Context: Max Beer, in his History of British Socialism, points out that Bacon looked for the happiness of mankind chiefly in the application of science and industry. But by now it is plain that if this alone were sufficient, we could all live in heaven tomorrow. Beer points out that More, on the other hand, looked to social reform and religious ethics to transform society; and it is equally plain that if the souls of men could be transformed without altering their material and institutional activities, Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism might have created an earthly paradise almost any time this last two thousand years. The truth is, as Beer sees, that these two conceptions are still at war with each other: idealism and science continue to function in separate compartments; and yet "the happiness of man on earth" depends upon their combination.

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)
Context: Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception — especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they are scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.

Source: Night Watch (2006), p. 221

Original French: La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.
Variant translation: The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus
Context: I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Book X, 1172a.17
Nicomachean Ethics

In an interview https://80000hours.org/2014/10/interview-holden-karnofsky-on-the-importance-of-personal-fit/ with Benjamin Todd, January 2014

Sam Harris, Lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDMOxjHIt0U at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley (November 10, 2010)
2010s
Context: "Religion" is a nearly useless term. It's a term like "sports". Now there are sports like Badminton and sports like Thai Boxing, and they have almost nothing in common apart from breathing. There are sports that are just synonymous with the risk of physical injury or even death … There is, I'm happy to say, a religion of peace in this world, but it's not Islam. The claim that Islam is a religion of peace that we hear ceaselessly reiterated is completely delusional. Now Jainism actually is a religion of peace. The core principle of Jainism is non-violence. Gandhi got his non-violence from the Jains. The crazier you get as a Jain, the less we have to worry about you. Jain extremists are paralysed by their pacifism. Jain extremists can't take their eyes off the ground when they walk lest they step on an ant... Needless to say they are vegetarian. So the problem is not religious extremism, because extremism is not a problem if your core beliefs are truly non-violent. The problem isn't fundamentalism. We often hear this said: these are euphemisms... The only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam.

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
Context: Such is the present aspect of the slavery question. For myself, I believe that the faith in which the government was founded still survives. I believe that the spirit of despotism which now says to the country, 'I will rule or ruin', will hear the imperial voice of the conscience of the American people, recognizing that justice and prosperity walk hand in hand, saying, 'You will do neither'. I believe that God did not hide this continent through all time as the spot whereon a nation should be planted upon the only principle that can render a nation as permanent as the race, to suffer the experiment to fail within a century. I believe these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Do you believe it? If aye, let us go into the battle, and God speed the right.

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: Gentlemen, you can never make me believe — no statute can ever convince me, that there is any infinite Being in this universe who hates an honest man. It is impossible to satisfy me that there is any God, or can be any God, who holds in abhorrence a soul that has the courage to express his thought. Neither can the whole world convince me that any man should be punished, either in this world or in the next, for being candid with his fellow-men. If you send men to the penitentiary for speaking their thoughts, for endeavoring to enlighten their fellows, then the penitentiary will become a place of honor, and the victim will step from it — not stained, not disgraced, but clad in robes of glory.
Let us take one more step.
What is holy, what is sacred? I reply that human happiness is holy, human rights are holy. The body and soul of man — these are sacred. The liberty of man is of far more importance than any book; the rights of man, more sacred than any religion — than any Scriptures, whether inspired or not.
What we want is the truth, and does any one suppose that all of the truth is confined in one book — that the mysteries of the whole world are explained by one volume?
All that is — all that conveys information to man — all that has been produced by the past — all that now exists — should be considered by an intelligent man. All the known truths of this world — all the philosophy, all the poems, all the pictures, all the statues, all the entrancing music — the prattle of babes, the lullaby of mothers, the words of honest men, the trumpet calls to duty — all these make up the bible of the world — everything that is noble and true and free, you will find in this great book.
If we wish to be true to ourselves, — if we wish to benefit our fellow-men — if we wish to live honorable lives — we will give to every other human being every right that we claim for ourselves.

News from Nowhere (1890)
Context: Go back again, now you have seen us, and your outward eyes have learned that in spite of all the infallible maxims of your day there is yet a time of rest in store for the world, when mastery has changed into fellowship — but not before. Go back again, then, and while you live you will see all round you people engaged in making others live lives which are not their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives — men who hate life though they fear death. Go back and be the happier for having seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle. Go on living while you may, striving, with whatsoever pain and labour needs must be, to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and rest, and happiness.

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Context: My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless. I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, dire misfortune has befallen me in consequence of actions prompted by the most cautious wisdom. This would humble me; yet conscious that I had acted rightly I would easily derive comfort from that conviction.

The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739)
Context: Some People have an Idea, or Notion of the Christian Religion, as if God was thereby declared so full of Wrath against fallen Man, that nothing but the Blood of his only begotten Son could satisfy his Vengeance.
Nay, some have gone such Lengths of Wickedness, as to assert that God had by immutable Decrees reprobated, and rejected a great Part of the Race of Adam, to an inevitable Damnation, to show forth and magnify the Glory of his Justice.
But these are miserable Mistakers of the Divine Nature, and miserable Reproachers of his great Love, and Goodness in the Christian Dispensation.
For God is Love, yea, all Love, and so all Love, that nothing but Love can come from him; and the Christian Religion is nothing else but an open, full Manifestation of the universal Love towards all Mankind.
As the Light of the Sun has only one common Nature towards all Objects that can receive it, so God has only one common Nature of Goodness towards all created Nature, breaking forth in infinite Flames of Love, upon every Part of the Creation, and calling everything to the highest Happiness it is capable of.

The Ball and the Cross, part IV: "A Discussion at Dawn", 2nd paragraph
Context: It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.

Ch I : Government by Laws and Sanctions, why necessary
Political Disquisitions (1774)
Context: If there be, in any region of the universe, an order of moral agents living in society, whose reason is strong, whose passions and inclinations are moderate, and whose dispositions are turned to virtue, to such an order of happy beings, legislation, administration, and police, with the endlessly various and complicated apparatus of politics, must be in a great measure superfluous. Did reason govern mankind, there would be little occasion for any other government, either monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. But man, whom we dignify with the honourable title of Rational, being much more frequently influenced, in his proceedings, by supposed interest, by passion, by sensual appetite, by caprice, by any thing, by nothing, than by reason; it has, in all civilized ages and countries, been found proper to frame laws and statutes fortified by sanctions, and to establish orders of men invested with authority to execute those laws, and inflict the deserved punishments upon the violators of them. By such means only has it been found possible to preserve the general peace and tranquillity. But, such is the perverse disposition of man, the most unruly of all animals, that this most useful institution has been generally debauched into an engine of oppression and tyranny over those, whom it was expresly and solely established to defend. And to such a degree has this evil prevailed, that in almost every age and country, the government has been the principal grievance of the people, as appears too dreadfully manifest, from the bloody and deformed page of history. For what is general history, but a view of the abuses of power committed by those, who have got it into their hands, to the subjugation, and destruction of the human species, to the ruin of the general peace and happiness, and turning the Almighty's fair and good world into a butchery of its inhabitants, for the gratification of the unbounded ambition of a few, who, in overthrowing the felicity of their fellow-creatures, have confounded their own?

Address on occasion of opening of State bank of Pakistan (1st July 1948)
Context: I shall watch with keenness the work of your Research Organization in evolving banking practices compatible with Islamic ideas of social and economic life. The economic system of the West has created almost insoluble problems for humanity and to many of us it appears that only a miracle can save it from disaster that is not facing the world. It has failed to do justice between man and man and to eradicate friction from the international field. On the contrary, it was largely responsible for the two world wars in the last half century. The Western world, in spite of its advantages, of mechanization and industrial efficiency is today in a worse mess than ever before in history. The adoption of Western economic theory and practice will not help us in achieving our goal of creating a happy and contended people. We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind.

Everyone seemed to be having fun, but they were so taking many drugs they wouldn't know it anyway.
"Charlotte Rampling: In from the cold", in The Independent (25 March 2005) http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/charlotte-rampling-in-from-the-cold-529788.html.

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10
Context: I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not.

As quoted in 1,001 Pearls of Wisdom (2006) by David Ross
Context: Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle — the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

The Savage Nation, The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2011(?) (Audio: Michael Savage – Suicide Is Never An Option https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oIjOjPW2OM&feature=youtu.be&t=1m29s)
2011
Context: Just remember, it's not heroic to kill yourself, and it's a violation of God's Laws.... The way it was explained to me in my tradition is... you are not your own property. You are God's property.... You have no right to commit suicide, don't even think– it's not an option. See, like in America, everything is "choice". "It's your choice." It's NOT your choice. You have no choice, so don't even think about it. It's not your choice to make. Soon enough, God will come for you, okay? Leave it at that. And every time you have a suicidal ideation, just push it away, it's not you. It's the devil trying to put something inside your head. We live in such a sick society, that the demented people who run the mind games on our heads like you to believe that it's your choice whether to commit suicide or not. It's NOT your choice. It's immoral, and that's the end of it. You don't have to ponder everything like it's a choice. You have children, that's all you need to know. What would the world be like for them if you committed suicide, do you have any idea? What you've gotta do is just get back on the road and keep walking, and don't stare at the chasm. That's all. You stand on the edge of a road, look down at the chasm and you'll get dizzy and fall in. So stop staring at the chasm. Get back on the road, and go back down to the meadow, and be with your family. And go on continue the struggle. That's all there is to it. That's your job. Your job is to struggle until you drop dead. That's it. Stop trying to be happy. The day you stop trying to be happy you might have a chance to live.

"The Answer" (1936)
Context: Then what is the answer? — Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will not be fulfilled.

An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) Treatise II, Section 3
Context: That Action is best, which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions Misery.

"Are You Happy Now?"
2000s, Hotel Paper (2003)
Context: Now, don't just walk away. Pretending everything's okay, and you don't care about me. And I know there's just no use, when all your lies become your truths and I don't care. Could you look me in the eye? And tell me that you're happy now? Would you tell it to my face? Or have I been erased? Are you happy now? Are you happy now?

XXI. That the Good are happy, both living and dead.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it.

Iran, Regime Change or Behavior Change: A false choice http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=104&page=5, Hudson Institute, Apr. 3, 2007.
Speeches, 2007

Source: Píseň "Don't Worry, be Happy"

"Humanity", Ch.VII "Humanity: A Way Forward", Part IX