Bennett Alan 1934-

„Take a Pew" from Beyond the Fringe

Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we are all of us looking for the key. I wonder how many of you have wasted years of your life looking behind the kitchen dressers of this life for the key. Others think they have found the key. They roll back the sardine tin of life, they reveal the sardines, the riches of life therein, they get them out and enjoy them. You know there is always a little bit in the corner you can't quite get out.

Buchanan James 1791-1868

(to Abraham Lincoln)

If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in the country.

Camus Albert 1913-1960

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

Connor Ralph 1860-1937

Love, you know, seeks to make happy rather than to be happy.

Dryden John 1631-1700

(translation of Horace: Odes)

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.

Fichte Immanuel Hermann von

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.

Gay John 1685-1732

The Beggar's Opera

How happy could I be with either,
Where t'other dear charmer away!

Gay John 1685-1732

„Polly"

An inconstant woman, tho' she has no chance to be very happy, can never be very unhappy.

Gilbert W.S. 1836-1911

The Pirates of Penzance

When constabulary duty's to be done,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one.

Gilbert W.S. 1836-1911

See how the Fates their gifts allot.
For A is happy - B is not.
Yet B is worthy, I dare say,
Of more prosperity than A.

Goldsmith Oliver 1730-1774

The Deserted Village

How happy he who crowns in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease.

Hazlitt William 1778-1830

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state.
We must be doing something to be happy.

Herbert A.P. 1890-1971

„The Farmer"

The Farmer will never be happy again;
He carries his heart in his boots;
For either the rain is destroying his grain
Or the drought is destroying his roots.

Johnson Lyndon B. 1908-1973

Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other, to let her have it.

Johnson Samuel 1709-1784

Boswell - Life

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Johnson Samuel 1709-1784

Boswell - Life

Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.

Keats John 1795-1821

Letter to Fanny Brawne

I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my mouth.

Kristol Irving

Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.

La ROCHEFOUCAULD François Duc de 1613-1680

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.

La ROCHEFOUCAULD François Duc de 1613-1680

Sentences et Maximes de Morale

One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.

Larkin Philip 1922-1985

„Days"

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Marie Queen of Romania

When a man loves his children with an excess of passion, be sure that he is not happy.

Marx Groucho 1895-1977

The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his chequebook open.

Mencken H.L. 1880-1956

Chrestomathy

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Mill John Stuart 1806-1873

Autobiography

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

Poe Edgar Allan 1809-1849

Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

Pope Alexander 1688-1744

Eloisa to Abelard

Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possessed,
No craving void left aching in the breast.

Pope Alexander 1688-1744

An Essay on Man

The learn'd is happy nature to explore,
The fool is happy that he knows no more.

Pope Alexander 1688-1744

Imitations of Horace

Not to admire, is all the art I know,
To make men happy, and to keep them so.

Pope Alexander 1688-1744

„Ode on Solitude" (written when aged about 12)

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Proverbs and Sayings

Chinese

Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.

Russell Bertrand 1872-1970

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

Schulz Charles M.

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning,
and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out.
What am I doing right?

Schweitzer Albert 1875- 1965

One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy
are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Service Robert 1874-1958

The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.

Solon c.640-c.556 BC

Call no man happy before he dies, he is at best but fortunate.

Southey Robert 1774-1843

The Curse of Kehama

Thou hast been called, O Sleep! the friend of Woe,
But ´tis the happy who have called thee so.

Stevenson Robert Louis 1850-1894

Virginibus Puerisque „An Apology for Idlers"

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

Swift Jonathan 1667-1745

Polite Conversation

´Tis happy for him, that his father was before him.

Taylor Ann and Taylor Jane 1782-1866 and 1783-1824

Hymns for Infant Minds „A Child's Hymn of Praise"

I thank the goodness and the grace

Which on my birth have smiled,

And made me, in these Christian days,

A happy English child.

Updike John

Problems „How to love America ..."

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

Vaughan Henry 1622-1695

Silex Scintillans „The Retreat"

Happy those early days, when I
Shined in my angel-infancy.
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought.

Ward Artemus 1834- 1867

Artemus Ward in London

Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrer the money to do it with.

Wittgenstein Ludwig 1889-1951

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.

Happy quotes, happy quotations, sayings about happy