Emotions and Feelings

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

Happiness . . . is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

Happiness . . . is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

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

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

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they’re worn out and at times—and this is the worst of all—before we have new ones.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

O, well it has been said, that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak!

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert it only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested , and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert it only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested , and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes— I wonder if It weighs like Mine— Or has an Easier size.

I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes— I wonder if It weighs like Mine— Or has an Easier size.

Make your cross your crutch; but when you see another man do it, beware of him.

Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

If you injure your neighbor, better not do it by halves.

Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

Those who minister to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two worst of all the crimes.

No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespear.