Happiness and Joy

Teach me half the gladness

Our sincerest laughter

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

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

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

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.

The song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Boredom is … a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.

Not to admire, is all the art I know,

The learn’d is happy nature to explore,

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

FIRE . God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A paradise within thee, happier far.

Come, and trip it as ye go

Nods, and becks, and wreathèd smiles.

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

Il faut rire avant que d’être heureux, de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.

The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that ‘w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, joy, set it free! The Story of My Life (1902) ch. 4

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.