This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher
Is there no constancy in earthy things? No happiness in us, but what must alter? No life, without the heavy load of fortune? What miseries we are, and to ourselves? Ev’n then when full content seems to sit by us, what daily sores and sorrows.
It is a paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. As a matter of experience, we find that true happiness comes in seeking other things, in the manifold activities of life, in the healthful outgoing of all human powers.
Experience | Life | Life | Paradox | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Wisdom | Happiness |
Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning.
Experience | Failure | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Search | Unique | Wisdom | Happiness |
Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett
You have to live on twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness - the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends! - depends on that!
Evolution | Health | Money | Pleasure | Respect | Right | Soul | Time | Wisdom | Happiness |
J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
Body | Health | Individual | Liberty | Man | Pleasure | Society | Wisdom | Happiness |
William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker
True religion is not a mere doctrine, something that can be taught, but is a way of life. A life in community with God. It must be experienced to be appreciated. A life of service. A living by giving and finding one's own happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others.
Doctrine | Giving | God | Life | Life | Religion | Service | Wisdom | Happiness |
William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall
Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
Body | Health | Individual | Liberty | Man | Pleasure | Society | Wisdom | Happiness |
Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another.
Good | Inclination | Wisdom | Happiness |
F. H. Bradley, fully Frances Herbert "F.H." Bradley
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
John Bowring, fully Sir John Bowring
He that studies to know duty, and labors in all things to do it, will have two heavens - one of joy, peace and comfort on earth, and the other of glory and happiness beyond the grave.
Comfort | Duty | Earth | Glory | Grave | Joy | Peace | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
The passions and capacities of our nature are foundations of power, happiness and glory; but if we turn them into occasions and sources of self-indulgence, the structure itself falls, and buries everything in its overwhelming desolation.
Desolation | Glory | Indulgence | Nature | Power | Self | Wisdom | Happiness |