It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time - and they feel that you are trying - to make them happy. And you rarely can make another happy, unless you are happy yourself. ~ Ch. 10
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Making people good requires making them happy, which is only possible if you are happy yourself.
- In plain terms
- You can only help others be good if you are happy first.
- What can you take from it?
- Cultivate your own happiness to help others.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How does your happiness affect others?
- Can you be happy alone?
Another view
Sometimes difficult choices for growth cause temporary unhappiness.
More from Dinah Craik
Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their ow…
Permalink to quote #30 A lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it as mere imagination and sentiment, the thing is and will be; and women do suffer therefrom, in all its inf…
Permalink to quote #32 I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun i…
Permalink to quote #29
Related quotes
Laughter is by definition healthy.
Doris LessingDoris Lessing quote #6 It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time - and they feel that you are trying - to make them happy. And you rarely…
Dinah Maria MulockDinah Maria Mulock quote #31 Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant quote #32