Happiest Time Quotes & Sayings

One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you'd opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are "pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours." Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along. — Anne Fadiman

At primary school when people tried to find friends, I tried to find space that my imagination could fill with whatever it wanted, nearly always butterflies because to me they were perfection, like real-life fairies with prettier wings. At break time I turned myself into them, not just one butterfly but hundreds of them, my arms a kaleidoscope of colors as I danced across the wet grass while my class played tag, chasing around each other around the blacktop. I didn't understand it, like wasn't it too crowded I asked them all the time in my head. Don't you worry cherub, the lunch monitor said when she caught me watching the other children in confusion. You're Pluto. Happiest away from the heat of the action. She smiled a wrinkly smile. Nothing wrong with that. — Annabel Pitcher

On Christmas morning, our joy or our happiness can be at a very high level, not because of our anticipation of what we might receive but, rather, in anticipation of watching our loved ones open our gifts to them. In fact, if we're not careful, we can fail to register sufficient excitement and joy upon opening the gifts we receive from others. We must remember that they are happiest at that time and to give them top billing, to stretch their happiness to its full length. — Earl Nightingale

I retired from acting the same time they stopped hiring me. But following my own thing of making these small indie movies has been the happiest I've ever been. — Bobcat Goldthwait

I blushed when he stepped behind me, encircling my waist with his arms.
His lips brushed against my ear. I believe the answer that will not get me in trouble with you is: the happiest day of my life. Or something along those lines. Definitely not the end of my carefree days or when I get a ball and chain. Hmmm, I'm just realizing that I'm going to have to buy you birthday and anniversary presents at the same time. What a pain. — Andrea Cremer

It's still my happiest time when I'm eating. — Nobu Matsuhisa

I felt I should have been the happiest person in the world. But I looked inside, and that happiness was only on the surface, not so deep. Beneath it was hollow. Up until that time, I had been thinking meditation was a joke, a fad and a waste of time. — David Lynch

This moment, this one position in time, was the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living. I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction; certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since. — Patrick DeWitt

No one told me that it would all happen at the same hallowed time: Mothering is at once the hardest and the holiest and the happiest. — Ann Voskamp

When I think about it, the happiest, most successful, most fulfilled people I know are the ones who, over time, gave themselves the most permissions - in all areas of their lives. Guided — Sandford Lyne

The happiest folks are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe.
-The Crone's Eyes — Kate Morton

Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful? ... A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how we weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dear John,
There's so much I want to say to you, but I'm not sure where I should begin. Should I start by telling you that I love you? Or that the days I've spent with you have been the happiest in my life? Or that in the short time I've known you, I've come to believe that we were meant to be together? I could say all those things and all would be true, but as I reread them, all I can think is that I wish I were with you now, holding your hand and watching your elusive smile. — Nicholas Sparks

I am happiest when I am idle. I could live for months without performing any kind of labor, and at the expiration of that time I should feel fresh and vigorous enough to go right on in the same way for numerous more months. — Artemus Ward

I'm really happiest living life 22 pages at a time and putting things in little boxes on pages. — Brian K. Vaughan

It's an exceptional time, and it's always the happiest time if you can be really present and doing the things that you want to be doing and surrounding yourself with the people you love. So, yeah, I'm in a good spot right now. — Julia Roberts

It was a terrible thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask Oz to give me one. - The Tin Woodsman, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz pgs 72-73. — L. Frank Baum

Anyone should be able to reopen discussions about an agreement at any time. It helps to think of agreements as mutable, organic things that will be revisited and modified as people grow and relationships change. When we see these structures as static, they can make relationships less rather than more stable, because they will fail to adapt to change...sometimes spectaculary.
A good relationship is not something you have, it's something you do. Over and over, the best, happiest relationships we have seen and been involved in are those whose members are constantly willing to renegociate the goundwork beneath them. In fact, some people set periodic dates in their calendar when they will review their relationship agreements with each other to make sure they're still working and see if anything needs to change. — Franklin Veaux

If you are a gamer, it's time to get over any regret you might feel about spending so much time playing games. You have not been wasting your time. You have been building up a wealth of virtual experience that, as the first half of this book will show you, can teach you about your true self: what your core strengths are, what really motivates you, and what make you happiest. — Jane McGonigal

Over time, we amass limiting beliefs about how life supposedly is - beliefs that are not valid. Then we allow these limiting beliefs to stop us from fully living our happiest lives. — Karen Salmansohn

The year that followed - was it the happiest year of his own life? He often thought so, even knowing that such a thing was foolish to claim about any year of one's life: but in his memory, that particular year held the sweetness of a time that contained no thoughts of a beginning and no thoughts of an end.. — Elizabeth Strout

I hang on to the statement of scientists that there is no time. Therefore, join me in telling everyone you are thirty-two. This allows me to go after young men and plan grabbing husbands from my girlfriends. Choosing to live in the timeless, I am now at the easiest and happiest time of my life. — Beatrice Wood

They loved, and quarreled, and made up, and loved, and fought, and were true to each other and untrue. She made him the happiest man in the whole world and the most wretched, and after a few years she died, and then, when he was thirty, he died, too. But by that time Catullus had invented the love poem. — Tom Stoppard

The keyboard is my whole life. My life is centered around either sitting at my keyboard or driving my car. Those are the two most important things, more than anything else. Being at my keyboard, it's the happiest time for me. — Brian Wilson

Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail; but a man is happiest when he does not even notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly. — Ivan Turgenev

Choose to focus your time, energy and conversation around people who inspire you, support you and help you to grow you into your happiest, strongest, wisest self. — Karen Salmansohn

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile. — Earl Nightingale

When I hear a man say that his childhood was the happiest time of his life, I think (puff) my friend, you have had a pretty poor life. — Winston S. Churchill

Happiest time of youth and life, when love is first spoken and returned; when the dearest eyes are daily shining welcome, and the fondest lips never tire of whispering their sweet secrets; when the parting look that accompanies "Good night!" gives delightful warning of tomorrow. — William Makepeace Thackeray

I never wanted to end it ... Everything just fell apart. The happiest time of my life turned out to be in my moment of crisis. — Yuuki Obata

I guess, anything and everything that she wants. Marriage, babies, travelling the world, whatever it may be. I'm my strongest and happiest when she is with me, so all I need is her. I intend to love and cherish that girl until the end of time, and more if it's possible. — Angela Richardson

Probably one of the happiest moments, outside the birth of all of my kids, was the first time we won an Emmy, that the show won an Emmy. That was a big night. — Dick Van Dyke

Montaigne said long ago: "Were I not to follow the straight road for its straightness, I should follow it for having found by experience that in the end it is commonly the happiest and most useful track." The doctrine of interest rightly understood is not then new, but among the Americans of our time it finds universal acceptance; it has become popular there; you may trace it at the bottom of all their actions, you will remark it in all they say. — Alexis De Tocqueville

But you could, if you were wrong and if you had a crooked heart, forget this most obvious and endearing thing and instead speak of a time you were all alone, in the country, with no one wanting a thing from you, not even love. You could say that was your happiest time. And if you did this then telling about this happiest of times would cause the person you most want to be happy to be unhappy. — Jenny Offill

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 Lyon Phelps

To a significant degree, the commitments we make in life define us. They reveal our interests, passions and goals, and give important clues in discerning meaning and finding happiness in life. While many seem to struggle with the archetypal human question, "who am I?" one simple look at who and what you're devoted to, what takes up your time and fires your imagination can clarify your life direction. It can help you to make authentic decisions that are rooted in your deepest convictions. We are happiest when we are in harmony with our passion. — Monks Of New Skete

I think the happiest time of my life was when I was in my late teens. I was a little bit of an it-girl. Making myself seen. And it was a wonderful time to be young. — Charlotte Rampling

Sadness to me is the happiest time, When a shining city rises from the ruins of my drunken mind. Those times when I'm silent and still as the earth, The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe. — Rumi

Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time of his life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it; he wanted no more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendships through the April afternoons. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I feel like writing about a time when I was probably, and think all of us are, the happiest before the obligations start in. — Neil Simon

Life wasn't too bad. The trouble with Man was, even while he was having a good time, he didn't appreciate it. Why, thought Milligan, this very moment might be the happiest in me life. The very thought of it made him miserable. — Spike Milligan

I began by asking myself, "What do I want out of life?" And the answer was happiness. Investigating further, I went into the moment when I was feeling happiest. I discovered something which to me was startling at the time. It was when I was loving that I was happiest. That happiness equated to my capacity to love rather than to being loved. That was a starting point. — Lester Levenson

From time to time, to remind ourselves to relax and be peaceful, we may wish to set aside some time for a retreat, a day of mindfulness, when we can walk slowly, smile, drink tea with a friend, enjoy being together as if we are the happiest people on Earth. — Thich Nhat Hanh

For me, there was nothing like my time with the Eagles - ever. We were young, and the world was new to us. It was the happiest time of our lives. They wouldn't let us play in their big leagues, but we had this game of ours ... this marvelous, blessed game ... and we just went out and played it. — Monte Irvin

I consider the two years in Beaufort when I taught high school as perhaps the happiest time of my life. My attraction to melodrama and suffering had not yet overwhelmed me, but signs of it were surfacing. No one had warned me that a teacher could fall so completely in love with his students that graduation seemed like the death of a small civilization. — Pat Conroy

When I draw the scene that I'd been dreaming about or had always wanted to draw, that is the time that I'm happiest. — Tite Kubo

There are times when, for many years, I've been irrelevant - and it was OK! I had my moment. No one is responsible for anyone else's dreams. I don't need a babysitter. I just needed to know that I could do this. I just think that my happiest time or my best time, upon reflection, is that I had the courage to do this. — Andy Kim

So when you see an old lady wearing a beehive, it's because it's from a time when she was most happy. I think that's true about music as well. There is a period from 1986 to 1996 where it's impossible to articulate the impact that new music had on my life. There was so much stuff coming out during that time that I was obsessed with, like the Dead Kennedys and the Breeders. It isn't as simple as saying that's when I was happiest, but it was a time when music had an emotional impact on me. When I was putting up the 43 Folders site, I had The Meadowlands by The Wrens on repeat for over a week and it became like a good friend. — Anonymous

Half asleep, he wondered whether that might not have been his happiest day ever, the last, perfect day swelling with the immensity of his secret intent, secret creation - the day before everything changed - the day before he realized, for the first time, yet with absolute finality, just how small his private immensity really was when measured against that other vast, dark, impersonal immensity, call it God, or history, or simply life. — Olga Grushin

There are many memories. but I'll tell you the one I like to think of best of all. It's just a homely everyday thing, but to me it is the happiest of them all. It is evening time here in the old house and the supper is cooking and the table is set for the whole family. It hurts a mother, Laura, when the plates begin to be taken away one by one. First there are seven and then six and then five...and on down to a single plate. So I like to think of the table set for the whole family at supper time. The robins are singing in the cottonwoods and the late afternoon sun is shining across the floor... The children are playing out in the yard. I can hear their voices and happy laughter. There isn't much to that memory is there? Out of a lifetime of experiences you would hardly expect that to be the one I would choose as the happiest, would you? But it is. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

The strongest climbers aren't always the happiest or nicest to be around; neither are some of them coming from the purest motivation. Climbing another V17 is not going to save the world! This activity of 'rock climbing' is merely one of many ways to exist, pass the time, and evolve and grow from one moment to the next. That's all. — Chris Sharma

The happiest people are those who have invested their time in others. The unhappiest people are those who wonder how the world is going to make them happy. — John C. Maxwell

I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer ... It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time. — William Styron

I hug her one more time and pull her down to the bed. And in my mind, I rise up from the bed and look down on us, and look down at everybody else in this hospital who might have the good fortune of holding a pretty girl right now, and then at the entire Brooklyn block, and then the neighborhood, and then Brooklyn, and then New York City, and then the whole Tri-State Area, and then this little corner of America- with laser eyes I can see into every house- and then the whole country and the hemisphere and now the whole stupid world, everyone in every bed, couch, futon, chair, hammock, love seat, and tent, everyone kissing or touching eachother ... and i know that i'm the happiest of all of them. — Ned Vizzini

There had come to him one of those moments of quiet despair that lie in wait for even the happiest. Stealthy-footed they leap upon us, as we walk along the street, as we sit at evening with fruit and wine upon the table and laughter on our lips, as we wake suddenly from sleep in the hour before dawn; neither at our work nor our play nor our prayers are we safe, those moments can leap at any time out of the blackness around human life and suddenly the colors that we have nailed to our mast are there no longer and all that we have grasped is dust. — Elizabeth Goudge

The happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotchman. You must pay for it in many ways, as for all other advantages on earth. You have to learn the paraphrases and the shorter catechism; you generally take to drink; your youth is a time of louder war against society, of more outcry and tears and turmoil, than if you had been born, for instance, in England. But somehow life is warmer and closer; the hearth burns more redly; the lights of home shine softer on the rainy street; the very names, endeared in verse and music, cling nearer round our hearts. — Robert Louis Stevenson

The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe. — Kate Morton

It is the liveliest time in life, the happiest of the irresponsible times in life. Mothers echo its happiness - nothing is like a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a son home from college. Bloom does actually come upon these mothers; it is a visible thing; and they run like girls, walk like athletes, laugh like sycophants. Yet they give up their sons to the daughters of other mothers, and find it proud rapture enough to be allowed to sit and watch. — Booth Tarkington

So far I had been travelling alone with my handbook and my Western Railway timetable: I was happiest finding my own way and did not require a liaison man. It had been my intention to stay on the train, without bothering about arriving anywhere: sight-seeing was a way of passing the time, but, as I had concluded in Istanbul, it was an activity very largely based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled. — Paul Theroux

I do not see how we can help thinking about God when He is so good to us all the time. Let me tell you how it seems to me that we come to know about our heavenly Father. It is from the power of love which is in our own hearts. Love is at the soul of everything. Whatever has not the power of loving must have a very dreary life indeed. We like to think that the sunshine and the winds and the trees are able to love in some way of their own, for it would make us know that they were happy if we knew that they could love. And so God who is the greatest and happiest of all beings is the most loving too. All the love that is in our hearts comes from him, as all the light which is in the flowers comes from the sun. And the more we love, the more near we are to God and His Love. — Phillips Brooks

Being pregnant is supposed to be the happiest time in your life. — Kyla Pratt

I am happiest when I am with my wife, Susi, and our two boys exploring and loving something for the first time. — Mario Batali

His throat bobbled. His kiss that time was deep and thorough, unhurried and intent.
I let the dawn creep inside me, let it grow with each movement of his lips and brush of his tongue against mine. Tears pricked beneath my closed eyes.
It was the happiest moment of my life. — Sarah J. Maas

No one embodied the spirit of the frontier more than Daniel Boone, who faced and defeated countless natural and man-made dangers to literally hand cut the trail west through the wilderness. He marched with then colonel George Washington in the French and Indian War, established one of the most important trading posts in the West, served three terms in the Virginia Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. His exploits made him world famous; he served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and numerous other pioneer stories. He was so well known and respected that even Lord Byron, in his epic poem Don Juan, wrote, "Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere ... " And yet he was accused of treason - betraying his country - the most foul of all crimes at the time. What really happened to bring him to that courtroom? And was the verdict reached there correct? — Bill O'Reilly

Autumn was her happiest season. There was an expectancy about its sounds and shapes: the distant thunk pomp of leather and young bodies on the practice field near her house made her think of bands and cold Coca-Colas, parched peanuts and the sight of people's breath in the air. There was even something to look forward to when school started - renewals of old feuds and friendships, weeks of learning again what one half forgot in the long summer. Fall was hot-supper time with everything to eat one missed in the morning when too sleepy to enjoy it. — Harper Lee

How had he lost the upper hand so quickly? His dick jerked and wept like it had found the happiest place on earth. He was gonna come, but he'd be damned if he did it before Michaels. He dropped his arm from around Michaels' chest and gripped him on his hip, using it to slam that sexy ass back into him while he jerked him fast with the other. He felt Michaels' dick jump in his fist and knew it was time. Good because he was past time. "Fuckin' come," he hissed, snapping his hips forward at the same time he squeezed the head of Michaels' dick. He went down on that length one more time, squeezed hard, twisted his palm and shot his fist back up, wrenching the first spurt of hot come from it. Yesssss. Michaels grunted with the next spurt and worked his ass hard against Judge's aching dick. The sounds he made were delicious and wicked. Sounds he'd never heard a man make. Masculine but erotic as hell. Not ashamed to show Judge how much he'd pleased him. It — A.E. Via

You create a blueprint of your best performance, and you're happiest the night you surpass that blueprint. That won't happen that often, but it will happen. It's like sculpting: you keep refining. When you have a piece that is yours, that is just you, that becomes obsessive; you think about it all the time. — Kenneth Cranham

I'm happiest when I feel that several almost opposing sensations are present at the same time. — David Salle

A thousand happy moments succumbed to history. It was the happiest hour of the year, worst time of our lives. I can still smell the ruins from that cold dark brute stormy October night. — Parul Wadhwa

The first time I played the Masters, I was so nervous I drank a bottle of rum before I teed off. I shot the happiest 83 of my life. — Chi Chi Rodriguez

The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life ... It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free. — Evelyn Waugh

I think we're programmed for hardship. In my experience, human beings are happiest when they're working themselves to the bone. People are more likely to feel adrift and unsatisfied when they have too much leisure time. Obstacles are good. — Jeff Carlson

I love touring. I can't wait. Everything is just normal when you're finally on tour. I think, for me, it's my happiest thing; I love moving around, and I have friends and family all over the place. It's kind of my time. It's almost like home. It's when I get to see everybody. — Alison Mosshart

And for the rest, I remember little enough. Except that we were happy, and healthy, and in love.
It didn't last. Nothing worth having ever does. But it was the happiest time of my young life. — Christian Cameron

Sketches are social things. They are lonely outside the company of other sketches and related reference material. They are lonely if they are discarded as soon as they are done. And they definitely are happiest when everyone in the studio working on the project has spent time with them. — Bill Buxton

The happiest time of my life is now. — Marilyn Monroe

I do not think I was a hothead - not then and not now. I thought I was right. I had read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. Segregation seemed evil from the time I was a boy. Slavery is an abomination on the American soul, ineradicable stain on our body politic. But Penn Center lit a fire that has never gone out, and the election of President Barack Obama was one of the happiest days of my life. — Pat Conroy

I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labor. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for labor's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy. — Booker T. Washington

The happiest time in a man's life is when he is in the red hot pursuit of a dollar with a reasonable prospect of overtaking it. — Josh Billings

I've probably had my best time acting - or not acting, or trying to not act - on things like 'The Low Down' or 'Treacle Jr.' I'm happiest doing things like that. Not just because they're lead roles, but because there's more freedom in them. — Aidan Gillen

God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise. With thee conversing I forget all time. — John Milton

Rancid was poor. He didn't seem to know that he was poor, however, and I never had the heart to tell him, because he was the happiest person I'd ever met. If he had known he was poor, of course, then he would have been sad and miserable all the time. As it was, Rancid was able to live out his whole life in blissful ignorance of the fact that he was poor. — Patrick F. McManus

As far as I'm concerned, the happiest time of my life is now. There's a future and I can't wait to get to it. — Marilyn

When I black out, it's the happiest time of my life. — Artie Lange

Truth is, I'm generally happiest when it's just me. It's okay to be madly in love with yourself. — Richelle E. Goodrich

After three decades of research, Zimbardo found that the healthiest, happiest, highest performers blend the best of both worlds. The optimal time perspective combines the energy, joy, and openness of Presents, with the strength, fortitude, and long-term vision of the Futures. — Steven Kotler

I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, I'll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. I'd do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets. — Cynthia Hand

We never did lose what we found in this room," he said, bending now and kissing my shoulder. "In fact, we turned it into the happiest hate-love of all time. — Christina Lauren

Imagine if you had access to data that allowed you to rank on a scale of overall happiness which people in your life made you the happiest. ... Would you make more time for those people? — Ariel Garten

Self-acceptance was the foundation of the happiest time in your life and it was the engine that powered the train. — Phillip C. McGraw

It was the most fun I've ever had on a movie. It was one of the happiest times in my life. I was living in New York, and I really enjoyed acting at the time. Also, it's funny because that was also the time when I went downhill. — Mickey Rourke

I've never had sex," repeated Artemis. "Never wanted to." It was her turn not to look at him as she spoke. "Not with a man or with a woman, or with an animal, though my family joke about it. And I never will. The thought of it disgusts me. But the others - my family - they think that means I haven't got any feelings. That I could never care about anyone, that I don't know what love is, just because I don't-" she shuddered. "But you know what?" she said, turning to him now. "I really loved my dogs. Everyone laughs at me for it, but it's true. The time I spent with them, running, hunting, those were the happiest times of my life. They understood me. They were animals but they understood me far better than anyone in my family ever will. We shared something, we were the same. And they made me kill them. — Marie Phillips

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow'll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year,- Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day; For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be queen o' the May. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

He knocked his pipe out. His paper rustled to the floor and his spectacles slid own his nose. His hands, red and shiny, lay relaxed on his knee. He abandoned himself to the quietness and the warmth of sun and fire. Autumn was a strange paradoxical time of the year. It was the season when he was happiest and yet it was the season when he was most vulnerable and most aware, and that was not always a happiness. Yet he liked autumn. — Elizabeth Goudge

We take pictures because we can't accept that everything passes, we can't accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility. We wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time that turns children into that other, lesser species: adults. We take pictures because we know we will forget. We will forget the week, the day, the hour. We will forget when we were happiest. We take pictures out of pride, a desire to have the best of ourselve preserved. We fear that we will die and others will not know we lived. — Michelle Richmond

How much more so when it comes to the deep truths of the Christian faith. God loves you; you matter to him. That is a fact, stated as a proposition. I imagine most of you have heard it any number of times. Why, then, aren't we the happiest people on earth? It hasn't reached our hearts. Facts stay lodged in the mind, for the most part. They don't speak at the level we need to hear. Proposition speaks to the mind, but when you tell a story, you speak to the heart. We've been telling each other stories since the beginning of time. It is our way of communicating the timeless truths, passing them down. And that's why when Jesus comes to town, he speaks in a way that will get past all our intellectual defenses and disarm our hearts. He tells a certain kind of story. — John Eldredge

I think the first 10 years of my daughter's life were my mother's happiest, because she could finally have carefree time with a kid. — Imelda Staunton

The Princess was never heard to complain, for she was a true Princess with a pure heart. The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe. Thus did the Princess grow up contented. — Kate Morton

Another great luxury is letting myself cry - I always feel marvellously peaceful after that. But it is difficult to arrange times for it, as my face takes so long to recover; it isn't safe in the mornings if I am to look normal when I meeter father at lunch, and the afternoons are no better, as Thomas is home by five. It would be all right in bed at night but such a waste, as that is my happiest time. Days when father goes over to read in the Scoatney library are good crying days. — Dodie Smith

"Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 — Dorothy Parker