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Quotes About Happiness

Penso che un peccatore debba peccare con allegria, oppure non peccare affatto. [...] E' ben misero chi pecca dispiacendosene.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
Too often she had seen the first indignation of disappointed parents at the marriage of the their children harden into a matter of pride, a matter of doggedness and principle, and finally become ridiculous. If the marriages turned out happy, how absurd to persist in an antiquated disapproval; if they turned out wretched, then how urgent the special need for love.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
kind ladies smiled, reason or no. They smiled, not because they were happy but because they wished to make happy.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
Such a little difference in Susie's ways and ideas would make them all so happy; such a little change in Peter's habits would make his wife's life radiant. But they all lived blindly, on, each day a day of emptiness, each of those precious days, so crowded with opportunities, and possibilities, and unheeded blessings, and presently life would be behind them, and their chances gone for ever.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
I have a peculiar capacity for doing nothing and yet enjoying myself.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful things
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
and there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my frost-bound garden, in spite of my years and children.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
but the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
and there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my frost-bound garden, in spite of my years and children. But I did it behind a bush, having a due regard for the decencies.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again long, desiring . . .
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! Yet my town acquaintances look upon it as imprisonment, and burying, and I don't know what besides, and would rend the air with their shrieks if condemned to such a life. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find my happiness so easily.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
I asked nothing better of life. I still ask nothing better of life. Strange to say—for surely it is strange not to have increased one's claims, during the passage from youth to maturity?—these very things, just sun on my face, the feel of spring round the corner, and nobody anywhere in sight except a dog, are still enough to fill me with utter happiness. How convenient. And how cheap.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
I see no use in thinking of painful past things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as cheerful as possible—like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply to be alive with nothing in my body hurting.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
Love—that was what a man wanted; needed; simply had to have. Kind love. Sweet, smiling, gracious love. In one's house like sunshine, filling it with light; in one's garden like roses, filling it with fragrance. Ah, how he could imagine it! How well he could imagine it, the sort of heaven there would be about a man all day—and all night too, if, by the blessing of God, one happened to have married Love.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
and there is no getting away from it, I am made for dogs and dogs for me, because the instant I saw him I began to cheer up. Sitting
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
What's the use of worrying? ...and settled down to enjoy staying where she was. Much better enjoy what you had got, when by chance you had got it, instead of wasting time worrying because you ought really to be somewhere else.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
Up to now I have had fourteen, but they weren't spread over my life equally, and for years and years at a time I had none. This, when first I began considering my dogs, astonished me; I mean, that for years and years I had none. What was I about, I wondered, to allow myself to be dogless? How was it that there were such long periods during which I wasn't making some good dog happy? Lately
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
It is so sweet to be sad when one has nothing to be sad about.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
Nieustaj?co czuj? si? szcz??liwa (na dworze, rzecz jasna, jako ?e w ?rodku jest s?u?ba i meble).
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
Mrs. Colquhoun was being amiable because she thought Catherine was down and out, and Mrs. Colquhoun was what she was, hard, severe, critical, grudging of happiness, kind to failure so long as it remained failure, simply because there wasn't a soul in the whole world who really loved her. A devoted husband would have done much to bring out her original goodness; a very devoted husband would have done everything.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
I would have all couples neatly paired in years, the forties with the forties, and the twenties with the twenties. Should the forties, as sometimes happens, not care about other forties, and wish to frequent twenties, in their own interests they should be discouraged, and equally those twenties should be discouraged who, with the inexperience of their age, suppose they could be lastingly happy with forties. Fortunately
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
And while I ate muffins—things I had never been able even to look at in London, but now swallowed with complacence,—and Pincher sat in front of me watching every mouthful, just as though he hadn't had an enormous dinner a few minutes before, and the cat, finished with Knobbie's ears, deftly turned her over and began tidying her stomach, I did feel that my feet were set once more in the path of peace, and that all I had to do was to continue steadily along it.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
Well, I for one am unable to imagine how anybody who lives with an intelligent and devoted dog can ever be lonely.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim
A good thing this was, and that we should be so care-free and irresponsible, enjoying every minute of every day; for it was the Easter of 1914, the last Easter of the old, easy world, and our last, as well as our first, Easter as children together in the little house I had built for happiness.
~ Elizabeth von Arnim