CHAPTER VI
A MERRY HEART
Mirth is God’s medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it.—Holmes. Who among us can presume to estimate the value of a merry heart? What a perpetual blessing it is to its possessor and to all who must come into close relationship with the owner of it!
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There is nothing more pleasantly "catching" than happiness. The happy person serves to make all about him or her the more happy. What the bright, inspiring sunshine adds to the beauty of the fields, a happy disposition adds to the charm of all the incidents and experiences of one’s daily life.
A gay, serene spirit is the source of all that is noble and good.—Schiller. Do not you, whose eyes are perusing these lines, love to associate with a friend possessing a cheerful disposition? And do you not intuitively refrain from meeting with the unfortunate one whose looks and words are heavy with complainings or whose eyes fail to see the beauty of the world lying all about? And Your manners will depend very much on what you frequently think on; for the soul is as it were tinged with the color and complexion of thought.—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. if we are given to wise thinking we must reach the conclusion that as we regard these attributes in others, so others must regard them in us.
Nothing is more eloquent than a beautiful face. It is the open sesame to all our hearts. A sunshiny face melts away all opposition and finds the word "Welcome" written over the doorways where the face wearing a hard, unfriendly look sees only the warning, "No Admittance."
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.—Benjamin Franklin. But a smile that is only skin deep is not a true smile, but only a superficial grin. A true smile comes all the way from the heart. It bears its message of good will and friendliness. It is a mute salutation of "good luck and happy days to you!" and it makes whoever receives it better and stronger for the hour.
Be yourself, but make yourself in everything as delightful as you can.—Margaret E. Sangster. The genuine smile is closely related to, and is a part of, that laughter which beams and sparkles in the eye and makes the little, cheerful, smiling lines in the face that are so quickly and easily distinguished from the lines that are the outward sign of an unhappy spirit within.
Many centuries ago that wise and The tissue of the life to be we weave with colors all our own, and in the field of destiny we reap as we have sown.—Whittier. admirable philosopher, Epictetus, discovered that "happiness is not in strength, or wealth, or power; or all three. It lies in ourselves, in true freedom, in the conquest of every ignoble fear, in perfect self-government, in a power of contentment and peace, and the even flow of life, even in poverty, exile, disease and the very valley of the shadow."