Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Post #3220

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires. 
—Epicurus

Sunday, May 14, 2023

Post #3176

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
—Bertrand Russell

Sunday, December 11, 2022

Post #3154

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
—William Cowper

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Post #3087

It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness.
—Thomas Jefferson

Tuesday, May 07, 2019

Post #2822

How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
—William Shakespeare

Monday, May 06, 2019

Post #2821

It is no happiness to live long, nor unhappiness to die soon; happy is he that hath lived long enough to die well.
—Francis Quarles

Friday, October 05, 2018

Post #2670

None are happy but by anticipation of change.
—Samuel Johnson

Thursday, October 04, 2018

Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Post #2668

Happiness is a rare cosmetic.
—G. J. W. Melville

Friday, June 02, 2017

Post #2350

Pleasure, most often delusive, may be born of delusion. Pleasure, herself a sorceress, may pitch her tents on enchanted ground. But happiness (or, to use a more accurate and comprehensive term, solid well-being) can be built on virtue alone, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Thursday, May 04, 2017

Post #2329

Let us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.
—Aristotle

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Post #2129

Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
—J. Petit-Senn

Monday, July 06, 2015

Post #1851

Happiness depends on the taste, and not on the thing; and it is by having what we like that we are made happy, and not by having what others consider likeable.
—François de La Rochefoucauld

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Post #1779

Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.
—Jane Porter

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Post #1768

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Post #1759

The man of affluence is not in fact more happy than the possessor of a bare competency, unless, in addition to his wealth, the end of his life be fortunate. We often see misery dwelling in the midst of splendour, whilst real happiness is found in humbler stations.
—Herodotus

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Post #1707

To be happy is not the purpose for which you are placed in this world.
—James Anthony Froude

Monday, September 15, 2014

Post #1641

There is no happiness in having and getting, but only in giving. Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness.
—F.W. Gunsaulus


Friday, July 04, 2014

Post #1590

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
—Joseph Addison

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live — lives.
written by Theodore F. MacManus

A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.

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One From the Archives

Post #1234

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied...

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