What must of necessity be done you can always find out beyond question how to do.—Ruskin. One of the happiest observers of life and its higher purposes—Anne Gilchrist—says: "I used to think it was great to disregard happiness, to press to a high goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see there is nothing so great as to be capable of happiness,—to pluck it out of each moment, The doctrine of love, purity, and right living has, step by step, won its way into the hearts of mankind, and has filled the future with hope and promise.—William McKinley. and, whatever happens, to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which comes out of the storms of adversity, but strength and calmness."
The strongest incentive for the cultivation of a merry heart is that it is a duty as well as a delight. Sydney Smith has very wisely observed that "mankind is always happier for having been Since time is not a person we can overtake when he is past, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.—Goethe. happy; so that if you make them happy now, you may make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it."
True happiness has about it no suggestion of selfishness. The genuinely happy person is the one who would have all the world to be happy. "Is there any happiness in the world like the happiness of a disposition made happy by the happiness of others?" asks Faber. "There is no joy to be compared with it. The Every wish is a prayer with God.— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. luxuries which wealth can buy, the rewards which ambition can obtain, the pleasures of art and scenery, the abounding sense of health and the exquisite enjoyment of mental creations are nothing to this pure and heavenly happiness, where self is drowned in the blessings of others."
Say not always what you know, but always know what you say.—Claudius. One of the most heavenly attributes of happiness is that it begets more happiness not only in ourselves but in others about us. It has in it an uplift and a strength that enables us to build the stronger to-day against the distress that would beset us to-morrow.
"Health and happiness" are terms that are so often closely linked in our speech and in our literature. One is Evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart.—Hood. almost a synonym for the other. Perhaps the true significance existing between the two would be more correctly stated were we to reverse the form in which they are usually set forth and say "happiness and health" instead. All observers of human nature and its many complex attributes are convinced that happiness is the Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.—Goldsmith. fountain spring of health.
One of our keenest students of life tells us that "small annoyances are the seeds of disease. We cannot afford to entertain them. They are the So use present pleasures that thou spoilest not future ones.—Seneca. bacteria,—the germs that make serious disturbance in the system, and prepare the way for all derangements. They furnish the mental conditions which are manifested later in the blood, the tissues, and the organs, under various pathological names. Good thoughts are the only germicide. We must kill our resentment and regret, impatience and anxiety. Health will inevitably follow. Every thought that holds us in even the slightest degree to either anticipation A good manner springs from a good heart, and fine manners are the outcome of unselfish kindness.—Margaret E. Sangster. or regret hinders, to some extent, the realization of our present good. It limits freedom. Life is in the present tense. Its significant name is Being."
Whether we are happy or not depends much on our point of view. The disposition to look at everything through kind and beautiful eyes makes all the world more kind and beautiful. If we are gloomy within the whole world appears likewise. Perhaps the two ways of looking at things could not be better set forth than in these clever lines by E. J. Hardy:
"How dismal you look!" said a bucket to his companion, as they were Reading and study are in no sense education, unless they may contribute to this end of making us feel kindly towards all creatures.—Ruskin. going to the well.
"Ah!" replied the other, "I was reflecting on the uselessness of our being filled, for, let us go away never so full, we always come back empty."
"Dear me! how strange to look on it that way!" said the other bucket; "now I enjoy the thought that however empty we come, we always go away full. Only look An hour in every day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits would, if properly employed, enable a person of ordinary capacity, to go far toward mastering a science.—Samuel Smiles. at it in that light and you will always be as cheerful as I am."