This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield
It is one of the many paradoxes of psychology that the pursuit of happiness defeats its own purpose. We find happiness only when we do not directly seek it. An analogy will make this clear. In listening to music at a concert, we experience pleasurable feelings only so long as our attention is directed towards the music. But if in order to increase our happiness we give all our attention to our subjective feeling of happiness, it vanishes. Nature contrives to make it impossible for anyone to attain happiness by turning into himself.
Attention | Experience | Feelings | Listening | Music | Nature | Order | Psychology | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Happiness is the legitimate fruitage of love and service. Set happiness before you as an end, no matter in what guise of wealth, or fame, or oblivion even, and you will not attain it. But renounce it and seek the pleasure of God, and that instant is the birth of your own.
Birth | Fame | God | Love | Oblivion | Pleasure | Service | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Planning for happiness is rarely successful. Happiness just happens.
Peace among nations, like happiness for the individual, is not an end, but a by-product that usually comes when you live right.
True happiness springs from moderation.
Moderation | Wisdom | Happiness |
John Oliver Hobbes, Pseud. for Mrs. Pearlmary-Teresa Craigie
Why should we refuse the happiness this hour gives us, because some other hour might take it away?
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, and of all they are willing to endure.