8 Dinah Maria Mulock Quotes on Happiness

Dinah Maria Mulock quotes on happiness

27. Nevertheless, taking life as a whole, believing that it consists not in what we have, but in our power of enjoying the same; that there are in it things nobler and dearer than ease, plenty, or freedom from care - nay, even than existence itself; surely it is not Quixotism, but common-sense and Christianity, to protest that love is better than outside show, labour than indolence, virtue than mere respectability.

28. Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another? ~ Ch. 10

29. 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 in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not. ~ Ch. 10

30. 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 own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love. ~ Ch. 10

31. 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

35. It is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character. ~ Ch. 10

36. Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose - a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad - yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised. ~ Ch. 10

42. The only way to make people good, is to make them happy. ~ Ch 11