This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are still there. Beauty, food and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding. Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger. " - Rosamunde Pilcher, also pen name Jane Fraser
"A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future." - Albert Einstein
"I think by now I have made it fairly clear that I am not very happy with the word hope. I don't believe in people just hoping. We work for what we want." - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
"Apart from these extreme cases, there are large numbers of people who suffer from narcissistic disorders, who often had sensitive and caring parents from whom they received much encouragement; yet, these people are suffering from severe depressions. They enter analysis in the belief, with which they grew up, that their childhood was happy and protected. Quite often we are faced here with gifted patients who have been praised and admired for their talents and their achievements. Almost all of these analysands were toilet-trained in the first year of their infancy, and many of them at the age of one and a half to five, had helped capably to take care of their younger siblings." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski
"The failure was principally political and policy driven, there were many interests that weren't at all happy about losing their financial stake in a way that the system currently operates, but I think I became a lightning rod for some of that criticism. [about her role, as First Lady, in attempting to win reforms in health care coverage]" - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. " - Albert Einstein
"I hate crowds and making speeches. I hate facing cameras and having to answer to a crossfire of questions. Why popular fancy should seize upon me, a scientist, dealing in abstract things and happy if left alone, is a manifestation of mass psychology that is beyond me. " - Albert Einstein
"The youth of humanity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies. The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld humanity. Children freed of the ignorantly founded educational traditions and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned, computer-stored and -distributed outflow of reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally verified data, shall indeed lead society to its happy egress from all misinformedly conceived, fearfully and legally imposed, and physically enforced customs of yesterday. They can lead all humanity into omnisuccessful survival as well as entrance into an utterly new era of human experience in an as-yet and ever-will-be fundamentally mysterious Universe" - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"While no politician or political system can ever afford to yield understandably and enthusiastically to their adversaries and opposers, all politicians can and will yield enthusiastically to the computers safe flight-controlling capabilities in bringing all of humanity in for a happy landing." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
"If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects." - Albert Einstein
"If you are well-to-do and can maintain your household, love your wife in your home according to good custom... Make her happy while you are alive, for she is land profitable to her lord. " - Ptah-hotep, aka Ptahhotpe or Ptah-Hotep NULL
"Hope is something that is demanded of us; it is not, then, a mere reasoned calculation of our chances. Nor is it merely the bubbling up of a sanguine temperament; if it is demanded of us, it lies not in the temperament but in the will... Hoping for what? For delivereance from persecution, for immunity from plague, pestilence, and famine...? No, for the grace of persevering in his Christian profession, and for the consequent achievement of a happy immortality. Strictly speaking, then, the highest exercise of hope, supernaturally speaking, is to hope for perseverance and for Heaven when it looks, when it feels, as if you were going to lose both one and the other." - Ronald Knox, fully Ronald Arbuthnott Knox
"We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are. Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself." - R. J. Baughan
"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Albert Einstein
"No man is happy unless he believes he is [thinks himself so]." - Publius Syrus
"The happy man is not he who seems thus to others, but who seems thus to himself." - Publius Syrus
"The inner speech, your thoughts, can cause you to be rich or poor, loved or unloved, happy or unhappy, attractive or unattractive, powerful or weak. " - Ralph Charell
"This dying year will bear witness for or against us at the judgment. We sometimes say, "Time dies." Is time dead? No. The years die, but time lives. Time will live till the judgment, and then "Time shall be no longer." When time ends, eternity begins. The passing years are time's children, which will come from their graves to bear witness in the case pending between God and men at the great judgment-seat. Among the years which shall witness against us will be this dying year. If it shall be seen that in the year's record are written bright pages concerning us, happy shall we be. Pages which tell of toils for Jesus, of earnest prayers, of loyalty to God and conscience, of self-denials, of visitation of the sick, of sympathy for the distressed, of instruction of the ignorant--how many such things has the old year written for us?" - James Monroe Hubbert
"But now that so much is different, it is not up to us to change us? Could not we try to develop ourselves a little, and slowly work our share in the love upon us by and by? It has saved us all their hardships, and it is us slipped under the distractions, such as in a child's game sometimes loading a piece of real lace, and is happy and not happy, and finally lying on broken apart and genome Carlos Menem, worse than anything. We are spoiled by easy enjoyment like all dilettanti and stand the smell of the championship. But what if we despised our successes, as if we were starting from scratch, the work of the love of learning, which was always done for us? What if we went and beginners would, now that many things have changed. " - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem: they might point to the catkins hanging from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain descending on black earth in early spring. --- And we, who always think of happiness rising, would feel the emotion that almost baffles us when a happy thing falls." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way--and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Out of infinite longings rise finite deeds like weak fountains, falling back just in time and trembling. And yet, what otherwise remains silent, our happy energies" - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical words: they always come down to more or less happy misunderstandings." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"A wife endowed with spiritual wisdom is a real partner in life. She greatly helps her husband to follow the religious path. After the birth of one or two children they live like brother and sister. Both of them are devotees of God. His servant and His handmaid. Their family is a spiritual family. They are always happy with God and His devotees. They know that God alone is their own, from everlasting to everlasting. They are like the Pandava brothers; they do not forget God in happiness or in sorrow." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
"I know you're smart. But everyone here is smart. Smart isn't enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone feel happy to be here." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"Look, I'm going to find a way to be happy, and I'd really love to be happy with you, but if I can't be happy with you, then I'll find a way to be happy without you." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the struggle in which they died has enabled their descendants, isolated in their air-conditioned apartments, to believe, on the strength of their daily dose of television, that they are happy and free. The Communards went down, fighting to the last, so that you too could qualify for a Caribbean cruise." - Raoul Vaneigem
"You can make yourself happy or miserable - it's the same amount of effort." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
"A disorderly man who is about to die, and does not know it, suddenly begins to put everything around him in order. His life changes. He files his papers. Her rises early and retires early to bed. He gives up his vices. His friends are pleased with the change that has come over him. As a result, his sudden death seems all the more unjust. He was going to have a happy life. Similarly, the regularity of my new life was merely the final preparation of a condemned man." - Raymond Radiguet
"One would think a writer would be happy here " - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
"Recipe for a happy marriage: My wife and I always hold hands. If I let go, she shops." - Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
"Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, Taking, as Jesus did, This sinful world as it is, Not as I would have it, Trusting that You will make all things right, If I surrender to Your will, So that I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"All we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Charles Kingsley
"And what would you do, the Master said unto the multitude, if God spoke directly to your face and said, 'I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.' What would you do then?" - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"Part of us is always the observer, and no matter what, it observes. It watches us. It does not care if we are happy or unhappy, if we are sick or well, if we live or die. Its only job is to sit there on our shoulder and pass judgment on whether we are worthwhile human beings." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"The ideas behind the words are simple ones that work in everyday life; find what we most want to do; do it, no matter what; and in the doing be guaranteed a very difficult and a very happy lifetime." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"But it's never too late, or too early, to be happy -- a message Carlson wants everybody to listen to. There is a big payoff to learning to be happier... You handle your parents better, you handle your peer pressure, you handle life in general with a lot more equanimity, and it just gets to be a lot more fun." - Richard Carlson
"Meanwhile, life keeps moving forward. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when?" - Richard Carlson
"To a happy person, the formula for happiness is quite simple. Regardless of what happened early this morning, last week, or last year" - Richard Carlson
"The reason why the world sees not the happy condition of God's children is because their bodies are subject to the same infirmities with the worst of men, nor are they exempted from troubles; they are also subject to fall into gross sins, and therefore worldly men think, " - Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)
"The July Revolution took place; with one bound I became a revolutionist, and acquired the conviction that every decently active being ought to occupy himself with politics exclusively. I was only happy in the company of political writers, and I commenced an Overture upon a political theme. Thus was I minded, when I left school and went to the university: not, indeed, to devote myself to studying for any profession " - Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner
"If the stars twinkled more than usual on any given night, it meant that the angels in heaven were happy and were flitting across the doors of heaven; and since stars were merely holes ventilating heaven, the twinkling came from the angels flitting past the holes that admitted air into the holy home of God." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
"It's always difficult to pare down so many books. There's only room for five on the raft. So there was give and take. There has to be compromise, but it was very amicable. We had a fair degree of consensus. And we're happy with the choices. We think these five books represent the best of Canadian fiction this year." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
"For one of the greatest lessons in life is learning to be happy without the things we cannot or should not have." - Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
"May we never let the things we can't have, or don't have, or shouldn't have, spoil our enjoyment of the things we do have and can have. As we value our happiness let us not forget it, for one of the greatest lessons in life is learning to be happy without the things we cannot or should not have." - Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans