Happiness and Joy

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

Reader, I married him.

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z . Work is x ; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.

But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn a living at it. One should earn one’s living by work of which one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anyone can we find joy in scientific endeavor.

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.

He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy.

It isn’t what a man has that constitutes wealth. No—it is to be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth.

Nothing so soon the drooping Spirits can raise, As Praises from the Men, whom all Men Praise.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Cheerfulness, like spring, opens all the blossoms of the inward man.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.