This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"To be rich in admiration and free from envy; to rejoice greatly in the good of others; to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence; these are the gifts of fortune which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing. He who has such a treasury of riches, being happy and valiant himself, in his own nature, will enjoy the universe as if it were his own estate; and help the man to whom he lends a hand to enjoy it with him." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
"There are two kinds of politeness; one says, "See how polite I am"; the other, " I would make you happy."" - Henry Major Tomlinson
"Even granting the author [Rutherford]... his main principle, ‘That every man’s own happiness is the ultimate end, which nature and reason teach him to pursue’, why may not nature and reason teach him, too, to have some desire to see others happy as well as himself, or give him some delight in doing what seems fit and right, if these things do not interfere with his own happiness?... Why may he not, with the pursuit of that end, join some other pursuits not inconsistent with it, instead of transforming every benevolent affection, every moral view, into self-interest? This surely neither does honour to religion, nor justice to human nature." - Catharine Trotter Cockburn
"Happy the man who has learned the cause of things and has put under his feet all fear, inexorable fate, and the noisy strife of the hell of greed." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
"Be virtuous & you'll be happy." - Artemus Ward, pen name of Charles Farrar Browne
"How happy is he born or taught, That serveth not another’s will; Whose armor is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill! Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies,— What are you when the moon shall rise? An itch of disputing will prove the scab of churches. I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men’s stuff. Idle time not idly spent. Now all nature seemed in love, and birds had drawn their valentines." - Henry Wotton, fully Sir Henry Wotton
"If you have a positive attitude towards the events of your life, even though to an outside observer your life might seem full of suffering, you nevertheless will live a happy life. What to others might seem misfortunes, you will view as opportunities for spiritual growth." - Chayim Efrayim Zaichyk
"To be of use in the world is the only way to be happy." - Hans Christian Anderson
"No man is happy who does not think himself so." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"Remember this, that very little is needed to make a happy life." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"The really happy man never laughs or seldom though he may smile. He does not need to laugh, for laughter, like weeping, is a relief of mental tension and the happy are not over-strung." - Francis A. P. Aveling
"Be more prudent for your children than perhaps you have been for yourself. When they, too, are parents they will imitate you, and each of you will have prepared happy generations who will transmit, together with your memory, the worship of your wisdom." - Edmond La Beaume Cherbonnier
"To have been happy adds to calamity." - Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher
"When one is happy there is no time to be fatigued; being happy engrosses the whole attention." - E. F. Benson, fully Edward Frederic "E.F." Benson
"Of all suffering from fortune, the unhappiest misfortune is to have known a happy fortune." - Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
"No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow - the wholesome warmth necessary to make the heart-blood circulate healthily and freely; unhappiness - the chilling pressure which produces here an inflammation, there an excrescence and worst, of all, "the mind's green and yellow sickness" - ill temper." -
"If this life is unhappy, it is a burden to us, which it is difficult to bear; if it is in every respect happy, it is dreadful to be deprived of it; so that in either case the result is the same, for we must exist in anxiety and apprehension." - Jean de La Bruyère
"We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all." - Jean de La Bruyère
"Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again - this is the brave and happy life." - J. E. Buckrose, pseudonymn of Annie Edith Foster Jameson
"If adversity hath killed his thousands, prosperity hath killed his ten thousands; therefore adversity is to be preferred. The one deceives, the other instructs; the one is miserably happy, the other happily miserable; and therefore many philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity and commend it in their precepts." - Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
"In play we don't keep score. No one wins or loses. Anyone can play, alone or in a group. There are no sides - we're all on the same side... Play has all sorts of educational, physical and psychological benefits. A happy, fulfilling adult life may even depend upon the intensity and a variety of our play experiences." -
"Joy is indeed a precious quality which very few experience in their lives. The person who knows how to enjoy life will never grow old no matter how many years he can call his own. It is easy to be happy at specific times, but there is a certain art in being happy and contented every day." - Ora Capelli
"Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love for reading." - Rufus Choate
"Love, you know, seeks to make happy rather than to be happy." - Ralph Connor Pseud. of Charles William Gordon
"We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy." - Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
"A man who has had his way is seldom happy, for generally he finds that the way does not lead very far on this earth of desires which can never be fully satisfied." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
"The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness. Never both be angry at once. Never talk at one another, either alone or in company. Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire. Let each; one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other. Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each. Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has been committed, and always speak lovingly. Never taunt with a past mistake. Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another. Never allow a request to be repeated. Never make a remark at the expense of each other, it is a meanness. Never part for a day without loving words to think of during absence. Never meet without a loving welcome. Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance. Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness. Never forget the happy hours of early love. Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what is. Never forget that marriage is ordained of God, and that His blessing alone can make it what it should ever be. Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the narrow way. Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home." -
"Happy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ill that checker life." - William Cowper
""Order is Heaven's first law," and a mind without order can by no possibility be either a healthy or a happy mind." - Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, also known as Mulock, Mrs Craik, Mrs Craik, Miss Mulok, Miss Muloch, Miss Mulock
"The happy gift of being agreeable seems to consist not in one, but in an assemblage of talents tending to communicate delight; and how many are there, who, by easy manners, sweetness of temper, and a variety of other undefinable qualities, possess the power of pleasing without any visible effort, without the aids of wit, wisdom, or learning, nay, as it should seem in their defiance; and this without appearing even to know that they possess it." - Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough
"Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
"It is good... to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings; a conviction as necessary as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ration; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"You stop being happy as soon as you are conscious of wanting to be happy. Happiness, like health, must be unconscious." - Andre Bernard la Bovier de Fontenelle Étienne Fourmont
"The best government is not that which renders men the happiest, but that which renders the greatest number happy." - Charles Pineau Duclos
"How happy are the pessimists! What joy is their when they have proved there is no joy." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
"The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today." - Charles W. Eliot
"Socrates taught that true felicity is not to be derived from external possessions, but from wisdom, which consists in the knowledge and practice of virtue; that the cultivation of virtuous manners is necessarily attended with pleasure as well as profit; that the honest man alone is happy; and that it is absurd to attempt to separate things which are in nature so closely united as virtue and interest." - William Enfield, aka "The Enquirer"
"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change." - Euripedes NULL