Happiness and Misery

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

When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.

Jonathan Swift, in Happiness and Misery

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Henry David Thoreau, in Happiness and Misery

Sloppy, raggedy-assed old life. I love it. I never want to die.

Dennis Trudell, in Happiness and Misery and Life and Death

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Mark Twain, in Happiness and Misery

Be good and you will be lonesome.

Mark Twain, Following the Equator, in Happiness and Misery and Vice and Virtue

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.

Mark Twain, in Happiness and Misery

Learn not only to find what you like, learn to like what you find.

Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book, in Happiness and Misery

If life doesn't offer a game worth playing, then invent a new one.

Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book, in Happiness and Misery

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

Aesop, in Happiness and Misery and Success and Failure

Be happy. It is a way of being wise.

Colette, in Happiness and Misery

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Francis Bacon, in Happiness and Misery

Living well is the best revenge.

George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, in Happiness and Misery

Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.

Unknown, in Happiness and Misery

Live each day as if it were the last day of your life, because so far, it is.

Unknown, in Happiness and Misery

Misery is optional.

S. Gilmary Beagle, in Happiness and Misery

Nostalgia is the realization that things weren't as unbearable as they seemed at the time.

Unknown, in Happiness and Misery

Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.

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

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Arthur Schopenhauer, in Happiness and Misery

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