Lapham’s Quarterly

Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do.

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.

I had rather be in a state of misery and envied for my supposed happiness than in a state of happiness and pitied for my supposed misery.

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.

In every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.

The right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.

Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves very little trace in history.

Where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

I have given up considering happiness as relevant.