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Happiness: Quotations from Burning Words

Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.— F. W. ROBERTSON

There is something better for us in the world than happiness. We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly and gratefully. We will add a thousand fold to the happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the future which it brings; but we will not place happiness first, and thus cloud our heads with doubts, and fill our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils grow the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.— J. G. HOLLAND

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors. -— HORACE MANN

The sacrifices required in the Christian life are necessary to emancipate the soul, and raise it above its servile dependence on condition. They are losses of mere happiness, and for just that reason they are preparations of joy.— HORACE BUSHNELL

It is a great truth, wonderful as it is undeniable, that all our happiness - temporal, spiritual, and eternal - consists in one thing; namely, in resigning ourselves to God, and in leaving ourselves with Him, to do with us and in us just as He pleases.— MADAME GUYON

Happiness is neither within us nor without us, it is the union of ourselves with God.— PASCAL

Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element.— HENRY GILES

When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself - nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.— HUMBOLDT

So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.— J. C. RYLE

Beware what earth calls happiness; beware All joys, but joys that never can expire.— YOUNG

All that I have known of happiness has come to me through being made a child again. The efforts to find something to satisfy my inward longings, which were made through the intellectual nature, were as powerless to sustain me as a theory of bread-making would be to satisfy a hungry man. How far our sorrows and losses may help us in making us willing to receive what Heaven bestows, I know not; but when we find how fruitless our efforts are, we are as helpless as little children. Then, if humble and willing to wait, Jesus Christ will Himself come to us, a dear, human friend; and then we shall be surprised to find He was walking with us all the while when the path seemed so dark and lonely, and, dear me! how different every thing now appears. The world looks too beautiful to leave, yet, somehow, we were never so willing to leave it. The soul's calm sunshine.— THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.— POPE