Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Happiness
I think you the happiest couple in the world; for you’re not only happy in one another, but happy in yourselves, and by yourselves.
Congreve.—The Double Dealer, Act II. Scene 2.
If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies;
And they are fools who roam:
The world has nothing to bestow,
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.
Cotton.—The Fireside, Verse 3.
O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!
Shakespeare.—As You Like It, Act V. Scene 2. (Orlando.)
O hell! to choose love by another’s eye!
Shakespeare.—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I. Scene 1. (Hermia to Lysander.)
True happiness ne’er entered at an eye;
True happiness resides in things unseen.
Dr. Young.—Night VIII., Line 1021.
Oh happiness! our being’s end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate’er thy name:
That something still which prompts th’ eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die.
Pope.—Essay on Man, Epistle IV. Line 1.
The happy have whole days, and those they choose;
The unhappy have but hours, and those they lose.
Colley Cibber.—The Double Gallant, Act V. Scene 1.
But happy they, the happiest of their kind,
Whom gentle stars unite, and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend!
Thomson.—Spring; near the end.
When two events propitious meet,
They make the span of life most sweet.
Wheelwright’s Pindar, 5th Isthmian Ode, Line 11.
Happy the man, and he alone,
Who, master of himself, can say,
To-day at least hath been my own,
For I have clearly lived to-day:
Then let to-morrow’s clouds arise,
Or purer suns o’erspread the cheerful skies.
Francis’ Horace, Book III. Ode 29; Dryden.—To Sir John Beaumont.
For next, a truth which can’t admit
Reproof from Wisdom or from Wit,
To being happy here below,
Is to believe that we are so.
Churchill.—The Ghost, Book IV. Line 285.
Happy the man, whom bounteous gods allow
With his own hands paternal grounds to plough.
Cowley.—Epode, Ode II. Book V.
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.
Pope.—Ode on Solitude, Verse 1.
How happy could I be with either,
Were t’other dear charmer away!
But, while ye thus tease me together,
To neither a word will I say.
Gay.—The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Scene 2.
Call no man happy.
Sophocles.—Œdipus Tyrannus, Line 1529. (Translated by Buckley.) Herodotus.—(Ramage’s Thoughts from Greek Authors, 143.)
He who is good is happy.
Habbington.—Epi. to W. E.