There is a set of religious or rather moral writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine and to which we have but one objection namely that it is not true.
When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.
Our principles are the springs of our actions. Our actions the springs of our happiness or misery. Too much care therefore cannot be taken in forming our principles.
Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
I am about to be married and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.
The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.
There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.
We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness not by each other's misery.
Choose your life's mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature but by our institutions great is our sin.
Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery above weakness above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.