This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The happiness of a man is to do the true work of a man." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it." - François Arago, fully François Jean Dominique Arago
"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
"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." - Gamaliel Bailey
"All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had my periods of wretchedness, but with energy and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all." - Honoré de Balzac
"The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does." - J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
"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." - Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher
"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!" - Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett
"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." - Hugh Black
"Man have long begun to suspect that civilization's repression of our primitive impulses has somehow warped what are potentially the most productive forces in human nature. We are increasingly disturbed by the thought that society's passion for obedience and conformity may have overreached itself, causing us to lose in individual happiness perhaps as much as we have gained in group activity." -
"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." - William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker
"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." - 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." - William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall
"Wisdom no more consists in science than happiness in wealth." - Stanislas de Boufflers, fully Marquis Stanislas-Jean de Boufflers, Chevalier de Boufflers
"No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"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." - John Bowring, fully Sir John Bowring
"The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness." - F. H. Bradley, fully Frances Herbert "F.H." Bradley
"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." -
"Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another." - Eustace Budgell
"There is one way of attaining what we may term, if not utter, at least mortal happiness; it is by a sincere and unrelaxing activity for the happiness of others." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others - this is my criterion of goodness. And whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it - this is my measure of iniquity." - Robert Burns, aka Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard
"Employment, which Galen calls, "Nature's physician," is so essential to human happiness that indolence is justly considered as the mother of misery." - Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." - Allan Chalmers, fully Allan Knight Chalmers
"The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves." - William Ellery Channing
"There is no happiness in life, and there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"Let us not disdain glory too much - nothing is finer except virtue. The height of happiness would be to unite both in this life." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"The man who can really, in living union of the mind and heart, converse with God through nature, finds in the material forms around him, a source of power and happiness inexhaustible, and like the life of angels. The highest life and glory of man is to be alive unto God; and when this grandeur of sensibility to him, and this power of communion with him is carried, as the habit of the soul, into the forms of nature, then the walls of our world are as the gates of heaven." - George Barrell Cheever
"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." - George Barrell Cheever
"I have lived to know that the great secret of happiness is this; never suffer your energies to stagnate. The old adage of "too many irons in the fire," conveys an abominable lie. You cannot have too many - poker, tongs and all - keep them all going." - Adam Clarke
"The happiness of every man depends on the harmony between the development of his various faculties and the entire system of circumstances which govern his life." - Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte
"Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence." - Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
"The secret of happiness (and therefore of success) is to be in harmony with existence, to be always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot," to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore." - Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
"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." -
"The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose." - William Cowper
"Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"It was probably a mistake to pursue happiness, much better to create happiness, still better to create happiness for others." - Lloyd C. Douglas, fully Lloyd Cassel Douglas, born Doya C. Douglas
"That person lives in hell who gets what he desires too soon. Whether he finds his happiness in wealth, power, fame or women, or in a combination of all, that happiness will be meaningless if it robs him of his desire. Heaven is a country through which we are permitted to search eagerly and with hope for what we want." - Thomas Dreier
"True happiness is exotic; its birthplace is in heaven; unhappiness is of native growth." - Du Coeur NULL
"Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them." - Barry Duncan
"Seek happiness for its own sake, and you will not find it; seek for duty, and happiness will follow as the shadow comes with the sunshine." - Tyron Edwards