Happiness

Happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose - William Cowper

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed -- Storm Jameson

Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance -- Arthur Schopenhauer

Fulfilled life is possible in spite of unfulfilled wishes - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness -- Blaise Pascal

Every day I take time to look at myself in the mirror and say, I forgive you. Forgive to be happy. Write down all the reasons why you are happy. Give more than what you have. If you are at service, you'll be eternally happy - Robert Muller

Do not worry; eat three square meals a day; say your prayers; be courteous to your creditors; keep your digestion good; exercise; go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy; but, my friend, these I reckon will give you a good lift - Abraham Lincoln

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us - Henri Matisse, 1869-1954, French Artist

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so - John Stuart Mill

And last of all - but maybe more happiness-inducing than all of these put together - connection. Not just falling in love (though certainly that as well) but discovering a perfect, breathless understanding with another human being. Looking straight into the eyes of someone who really gets me, who excites me, who makes me curious about them, and curious all over again about myself and this strange world and my place in it - Julie Myerson http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2337690_2,00.html