This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; common sufferings are far strong links than common joys." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
"The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman." - Walter Savage Landor
"We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual." - Walter Savage Landor
"To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another." - Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz
"A long happiness loses by its mere length." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Happiness is the greatest paradox in nature. It can grow in any soil, live under any condition. It defies environment. The reason for this is that it does not come from without but from within. Whenever you see a person seeking happiness outside himself, you can be sure he has never found it." - William George Jordan
"If there remains an eternity to us after the short revolution of time we so swiftly run over here, ‘tis clear that all the happiness that can be imagined in this fleeting state is not valuable in respect of the future." - John Locke
"The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life." - Lucan, full name Marcus Annaeus Lucanus NULL
"Society's preservation and man's happiness depend on illusion. Nature itself, which certainly represents the will of God, deludes us in many respects, as when it leads us by the cords of love to reproduce the race. If a youth would consider the trouble in rearing a family, not one in a thousand would marry, but nature closes our eyes to the future (and indeed, wherever popular knowledge rises, the birth rate declines). The same is true of the other passions, which nature utilizes to deceive man and goad them toward the attainment of ends which, when attained, turn out to be but vanity." - Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL
"Even the happiest choice, where favoring heaven has equal love and easy fortune given, think not, the husband gained, that all is done; the prize of happiness must still be won; and, oft, the careless find it to their cost, the lover in the husband may be lost; the graces might, alone, his heart allure; they and the virtues, meeting, must secure." - George Lyttleton, 1st Baron Lyttleton of Frankley
"It is one of my sources of happiness never to desire a knowledge of other people's business." - Dolley Madison, fully Dolley Payne Todd Madison
"We possess only the happiness we are able to understand." - Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
"The first recipe for happiness is: Avoid too lengthy meditations on the past." - F. D. Maurice, fully John Frederick Denison "F.D." Maurice
"We all crave happiness, and we have at hand the predisposing conditions which make it possible. Nevertheless, the fact remains that deliberately to pursue happiness is not the surest way of achieving it. Seek it for its own sake and I doubt whether you will find it." - Robert J. McCracken, D.D.
"How admirable is that religion, which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same timed the highest happiness of this." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"True happiness renders men kind and sensible; and that happiness is always shared with others." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"I believe the recipe for happiness to be just enough money to pay the monthly bills you acquire, a little surplus to give you confidence, a little too much work each day, enthusiasm for your work, a substantial share of good health, a couple of real friends, and a wife and children to share life's beauty with you." - John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
"When a man is sure that all he wants is happiness, then most grievously he deceives himself. All men desire happiness, but they need something far different, compared to which happiness is trivial, and in the lack of which happiness turns to bitterness in the mouth. There are many names for that which men need - "the one thing needful" - but the simplest is "wholeness."" - John Middleton Murry
"What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?" - Margaret Oliphant, fully Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant, née Margaret Oliphant Wilson
"The common course of things is in favor of happiness. Happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want." - Babe Paley, fully Barbara Cushing "Babe" Mortimer Paley
"A man's happiness requires a great deal more than any material thing. We all find it out sooner or later. If we live our lives thoughtlessly, we defeat our purpose; because our faith in God becomes shattered and there is no greater loss." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"There is no happiness for him who oppresses and persecutes; there can be no repose for him. For the sighs of the unfortunate cry for vengeance to heaven." - Johann Pestalozzi, fully Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
"[Regimentation] I fear you. As victors, you may become the bureaucracy: doling out to each his bit as in a poorhouse, assigning to each his task as in a prison. And you will exterminate the creator of new worlds, - the free human will, and stop up the purest well of human happiness - the power of the one to face thousands, to stand up to peoples and generations." -
"Every person in the world may not become a personage. But every person may become a personality. The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Interesting thoughts can live only in cultivated minds. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays at the theater, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world; and they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others." - William Lyon Phelps
"Amusement is the happiness of those that cannot think." - Alexander Pope
"The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent." - Jean Racine, baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine
"The influences that really make and mar human happiness are beyond the reach of the law." - Walter Rauschenbusch
""Did you have a happy childhood?" is a false question. As a child I did not know what happiness was, and whether I was happy or not. I was too busy being." - Paul Reichmann
"We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in its purity; we do not remain two moments in the same state. Our affections as well as bodies, are in a perpetual flux." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Since every soul is looking for happiness and since happiness is really nowhere except in Divine Essence, every soul has to realize ultimately that it has been distracted. Then every soul has to retrace its steps so it can reach that Source of happiness which is both divine and universal." - Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar
"I have enjoyed the happiness of the world; I have lived and loved." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"The greatest happiness in life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"The happiness of married life depends upon making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness." - John Selden
"The security of nations is like happiness in love; a happy miracle which it is necessary to create anew every day." - Count Carlo Sforza
"Happiness is not in our circumstances but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are." - John B. Sheerin
"Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith." - Sam Shoemaker, fully Samuel "Sam" Moor Shoemaker, III
"One of the principal ingredients in the happiness of childhood is freedom from suspicion - why may it not be combined with a more extensive intercourse with mankind? A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character is like gold to its possessor; but to imagine more evil than meets the eye, betrays affinity for it." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
"The morose man takes both narrow and selfish views of life and the world; he is either envious of the happiness of others, or denies its existence." - Charles Simmons
"Why destroy present happiness by a distant misery which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? Every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making." - Sydney Smith
"We all would do well to entertain the possibility of new alternative realities; since it is our definition of reality that decides for each of us what is possible, and what is not possible... Our personal 'reality' is shaped by our thoughts. They determine how we perceive our future, our accomplishments, our relationships. Our emotions are our reactions to these thoughts and perceptions, and mirror our inner consciousness. They play a crucial role in our happiness and physical well-being." - Richard and Greta Smolowe