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

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

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

Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.

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

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

George Bernard Shaw, in Happiness and Misery

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

William Shakespeare, in Happiness and Misery

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Elbert Hubbard, in Happiness and Misery

Anxiety is interest paid on trouble before it is due.

Dean Inge, in Happiness and Misery

It is by fighting and triumphing over the enemies of the Buddha that we ourselves become Buddhas.

Daisaku Ikeda, (World Tribune, Oct. 29, 1999, p. 5), in Happiness and Misery and Science and Religion

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

Mary Howitt, in Happiness and Misery

Be happy. It is a way of being wise.

Colette, in Happiness and Misery

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov, in Happiness and Misery

So go for the jump, and chase all your dreams.

Mark van Essen, (from a lyric written for Bruce Springsteen), in Happiness and Misery

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.

Voltaire, in Happiness and Misery

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.

Joe Walsh, in Happiness and Misery

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

Mark Twain, in Happiness and Misery

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

Jerry Chin, in Happiness and Misery

It is not the bad times on which we should dwell, it is only poison to the mind and soul. We shall rise up after we fall, and continue to go on -- dwelling on the good, high-spirited times of our lives.

Austin Holmes, in Happiness and Misery