Happiness and Misery

Man is only happy as he finds a work worth doing, and does it well.

E. Merrill Root, in Happiness and Misery and Work and Recreation

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

Carl Sandburg, in Happiness and Misery

What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.

Jean Paul Richter, in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.

Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book, in Happiness and Misery

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

Oscar Levant, in Happiness and Misery

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

Henry Louis Mencken, in Happiness and Misery

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

John Stuart Mill, in Happiness and Misery

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Anaïs Nin, in Happiness and Misery and Wisdom and Ignorance

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.

George Orwell, 1984, in Happiness and Misery

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.

Blaise Pascal, in Happiness and Misery and Love and Hate

Life is ours to be spent, not saved.

D. H. Lawrence, in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

Joy is not in things, it is in us.

Jess Lair, in Happiness and Misery

Life is short. Live it up.

Nikita Khrushchev, (New York Times Magazine, August 3, 1958), in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Elbert Hubbard, in Happiness and Misery

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

Mary Howitt, in Happiness and Misery

It is not the bad times on which we should dwell, it is only poison to the mind and soul. We shall rise up after we fall, and continue to go on -- dwelling on the good, high-spirited times of our lives.

Austin Holmes, in Happiness and Misery

Learn from the past. Look to the future. Live in the present.

Steve Henthorn, in Happiness and Misery

Expect everything, and anything seems nothing. Expect nothing, and anything seems everything.

Samuel Hazo, in Happiness and Misery

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Happiness and Misery

So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Happiness and Misery