Food for Thought

What sunshine is to flowers,
smiles are to humanity.
These are but trifles, to be sure;
but scattered along life’s pathway,
the good they do is inconceivable.

—Joseph Addison

A smile. A laugh.
What makes someone happy
isn’t just the sound of your voice.
It’s also knowing that, for a moment,
distance means nothing.

—AT&T Wireless

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

—Ingrid Bergman

It is only possible to live happily ever after
on a day-to-day basis.

—Margaret Bonanno

The happiness of life
is made up of minute fractions . . .
the little soon forgotten charities
of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment,
and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance.
People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction.
Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment,
which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism,
of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

—Dalai Lama

Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold. The feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.

—Democritus

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances,
but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.

—Hugh Downs

Do your best every day, and your life will gradually expand into satisfying fullness.

—Horatio W. Dresser

To fill the hour . . . that is happiness.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere
and of leaving it behind them when they go.

—Frederick William Faber

We keep the joys we found in our pocket safe, so we can reach for them whenever we feel empty.

—Flavia

What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.

—André Gide

Nine keys to contentment:
Health enough to make work a pleasure.
Wealth enough to support your needs.
Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbours.
Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When someone does something well, applaud! You will make two people happy.

—Samuel Goldwyn

To love what you do and feel that it matters . . . How could anything be more fun?

—Katherine Graham

The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.

—Germaine Greer

Often the greatest enemy of present happiness is past happiness too well remembered.

—Oscar Hammling

Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage,
how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others.

—William Hazlitt

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

—Victor Hugo

Happiness comes with the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

—Storm Jameson

We cannot prevent mishaps or tragedies; we can only control how we respond to what happens.
When we can let go of feeling it’s very important for things to go as we want them to,
we ironically find the peace and happiness we desire.

—Kajama(November 14, 2002)

Happiness is independent of outer circumstances—
it’s how we interpret and assign meaning to everything that determines how we feel . . .
We can make our worlds brighter and more beautiful in an instant by looking for the good and assuming the best.

—Kajama(Wednesday, January 15, 2003)

Life rarely goes just as planned,
so if we pin our happiness on things working out as we expect them to, we’ll rarely be happy.

—Kajama(Thursday, September 18, 2003)

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad.
Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times, but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

—Helen Keller

Joy is the best makeup.

—Anne Lamott Grace Eventually: Thoughts on Faith

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

—Stanislaw Lec

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

—Abraham Lincoln

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity.
Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

—Thomas Merton

We are at our very best, and we are happiest,
when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy
on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves.
It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep.
It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.

—Earl Nightingale

Happy is he who dares courageously to defend what he loves.

—Ovid

Rest, rest at the heart’s core . . . till joy shall overtake.

—Christina Rossetti

Happiness does not come from doing easy work,
but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement
of a difficult task that demanded our best.

—Theodore Isaac Rubin

Happy, not from anything that happens.
Warm, not from fire or a hot bath.
Light, I register zero on a scale.

—Rumi

The secret of happiness is this:
Let your interests be as wide as possible,
and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you
be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

—Bertrand Russell

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time,
and may, therefore, be demanded back the next hour.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Just being happy helps other souls along.

—Ripley D. Saunders

The key to happiness is not to get more, but to enjoy what we have
and to fill the empty frame of our lives instead of enlarging it.

—Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery, of his passions.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Happiness comes when you believe in what you are doing,
know what you are doing, and love what you are doing.

—Brian Tracy

We carry the seeds of happiness with us wherever we go.

—Martha Washington

I had looked for happiness in fast living, but it was not there.
I tried to find it in money, but it was not there either.
But when I placed myself in tune with what I believe to be the fundamental truths of life . . .
when I began to develop my limited ability, to rid my mind of all kinds of tangled thoughts,
and fill it with zeal and courage and love . . .
when I gave myself a chance by treating myself decently and sensibly,
I began to feel the stimulating, warm glow of happiness.

—Edward Young

What makes us discontent with our condition
is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.

—Author Unknown

A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

—Author Unknown