Happiness and Misery

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.

William Shakespeare, in Happiness and Misery

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

George Bernard Shaw, in Happiness and Misery

Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.

George Bernard Shaw, in Happiness and Misery and Wealth and Poverty

Trouble is part of your life -- if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

Dinah Shore, in Happiness and Misery

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.

Arthur Somers Roche, in Happiness and Misery

The surest way of severely upsetting yourself for hours is by continuing to consider what concerns you most for a single moment too long.

Christopher Spranger, The Effort to Fall, in Happiness and Misery

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.

Bessie Stanley, in Happiness and Misery and Success and Failure

Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in Happiness and Misery

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.

Unknown, in Happiness and Misery

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.

Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book, in Happiness and Misery

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

Henry Louis Mencken, in Happiness and Misery

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be so.

John Stuart Mill, in Happiness and Misery

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Anaïs Nin, in Happiness and Misery and Wisdom and Ignorance

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.

George Orwell, 1984, in Happiness and Misery

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.

Blaise Pascal, in Happiness and Misery and Love and Hate

Life is ours to be spent, not saved.

D. H. Lawrence, in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

Joy is not in things, it is in us.

Jess Lair, in Happiness and Misery

Life is short. Live it up.

Nikita Khrushchev, (New York Times Magazine, August 3, 1958), in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.

John F. Kennedy, in Happiness and Misery

Do not scorn the person who is perpetually happy. He does know something you don't.

Paul Jones, in Happiness and Misery