Recipe For Happiness

Keep your Christmas trees, frosty snow men and red - nosed reindeer.

I yearn for an old fashion Christmas pie full of plums that stick nicely to the thumb.

Luckily I found the recipe in a box of Happiness Thoughts manufactured by a host of wise men.  I pass it along in hope you enjoy my Happy Holiday treat:

• No man is happy who does not think himself so - Marcus Antonius
  
• The world would be both better and brighter if we would dwell on the duty of happiness, as well on the happiness of duty.  - Sir J.  Lubbock.
  
• Happiness consists in being perfectly satisfied with what we have got and with what we haven't got.  It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy.  - Spurgeon.
  
• I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life, than on the nature of those events themselves.  - Humboldt.
  
• Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains and enjoyed every day.  It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from the Heaven, at our very doors.  - Tryon Edwards.
  
• Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.  But Joy is a positive thing; in JOY...something goes out from oneself to the universe, a warm, possessive effluence of love.  There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined makes happiness.  - John Buchan.
  
• 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.
  
• Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them.  - William Duncan.
  
• Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.  - Hawthorne.
  
• If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are - Montesquieu.
  
• All who would win joy, must share it.  Happiness was born a twin.  - Bron.
  
• The strength and the happiness of man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going in that way, too.  - H.W.  Beecher.
  
• Few things are needful to make the wise man happy, but nothing satisfies the fool; and this is the reason why so many of mankind are miserable - Rochefoucauld.
  
• Call no man happy till you know the end of his life.  Till then, at most, he can only be counted fortunate - Herodotus.
  
• The rays of happiness, like those of light.  are colorless when unbroken.  - Longfellow.
  
• As we are now living in an eternity, the time to be happy is today.  - Greenville Kleiser.
  
• Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning - John Dewey
  
• The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.  - Robert Louis Stevenson.
  
• This is the true joy of life -  the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown to the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish, clod of ailments and grievances.  -  George Bernard Shaw.
  
• The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy.  The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.  - William Phelps.
  
• An act of goodness is so itself an act of happiness.  No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.  -  Maurice Maeterlinck.
  
• Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best -  Bulwer.
  
• The haunts of happiness are varied, but I have more often found them among little children, home firesides, and country houses than anywhere else.  - Sydney Smith.
  
• Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness.  It is not perfected till it is shared.  - Jane Porter.
  
• Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.  - Herbert Spencer.
  
• To be happy is not the purpose of our being but to deserve happiness - Fichte.
  
• The question, "Which is the happiest season of life, being referred to an aged man, he replied: "When spring comes and in the soft air the buds are breaking on the trees, and they are covered with blossoms, I think, flow beautiful is Spring!  And when the summer comes and covers the trees with its heavy foliage, and singing birds are among the branches, I think, How beautiful is Summer!  When autumn loads them with golden fruit, and their leaves bear the gorgeous tint of frost, I think, How beautiful is Autumn!  And when it is sere winter, and there is neither foliage nor fruit, then I look up through the leafless branches, as I never could until now and see the stars shine!"  - Seneca.
  

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