Happiness and Joy

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

Where there is great love there are always miracles.

One’s grand flights, one’s Sunday baths, One’s tootings at the weddings of the soul Occur as they occur.

A paradise within thee, happier far.

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero Pulsanda tellus.

How happy he who crowns in shades like these,

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.

Before strongly desiring anything, we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

The good life is that which succeeds in existing for the moment, without reference to past or future, without condemnation or selection, in a state of absolute lightness, and in the finished conviction that there is no difference therefore between the instant and eternity.

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O, for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight Even while the dust moves There rises the hidden laughter Of children in the foliage Quick now, here, now, always— Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.

Happiness is finding two olives in your martini when you're hungry.

If you want to understand the meaning of happiness, you must see it as a reward and not as a goal.