Mankind are always happier for having been happy. So that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.
—Sydney Smith.
Never fancy you could be something if only you had a different lot and sphere assigned you. The very things that you most deprecate, as fatal limitations or obstructions, are probably what you most want. What you call hindrances, obstacles, discouragements, are probably God’s opportunities.
—Horace Bushnell.
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil
The harder task of standing still,
And good but wished, with God is done.
—Whittier.
Happiness and the sense of victory are only for those who live for conscience and duty and the soul’s higher ideals.
—Newell Dwight Hillis.