This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Cheerfulness is the friend and helper of all good graces, and the absence of it is certainly a vice." - Arthur Aughey
"Cheerfulness sharpens the edge and removes the rust from the mind. A joyous heart supplies oil to our inward machinery, and makes the whole of our powers work with ease and efficiency." - Arthur Aughey
"Between levity and cheerfulness there is a wide distinction; and the mind which is most open to levity is frequently a stranger to cheerfulness." - Hugh Blair
"Health and cheerfulness make beauty." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
"It is not the quantity of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests which makes the feast." - Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, aka Lord Clarendon
"Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease; and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness, and health; and profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debts, and so fetters them with irons that enter into their innermost souls." - John Hawkesworth
"The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Cheerfulness, sir, is the principal ingredient in the composition of health." - Arthur Murphy, pseudonym Charles Ranger
"Behold the wretched and dismal slavery of him who is in thrall to pleasures and pains, those utterly capricious and tyrannical master. We, however, must escape to freedom. But this is only possible if we are indifferent to Fortune. Then we shall attain that one overriding blessing - the serenity and exhaltation of a firmly anchored mind. For when error is banished, we shall have the great and satisfying joy that comes from the discovery of truth, plus a kind of disposition and cheerfulness of mind. The source of our pleasure in these things will not derive from their being good, but that they emerge from a good that is one’s own." -
"Recreation is not being idle; it is easing the wearied part by change of occupation. To re-create strength, rest. To re-create mind, repose. To re-create cheerfulness, hope in God, or change the object of attention to one more elevated and worthy of thought." - Charles Simmons
"The contemplation of the Divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are in their nature so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetual sources of it. In a word, the true spirit of religion cheers as well as composes the soul. It banishes, indeed, all levity of behavior, all vicious and dissolute mirth, but in exchange fills the mind with a perpetual serenity, uninterrupted cheerfulness, and an habitual inclination to please others as well as to be pleased in itself." -
"As for my labors, if they can but wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give a morning’s cheerfulness to an honest mind - in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or receive from then the smallest addition to their innocent diversions - I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
"Charity should be the habit of our estimates; kindness of our feelings; benevolence of our affections; cheerfulness of our social intercourse; generosity of our living; improvement of our progress; prayer of our desires; fidelity of our sex-examination; being and doing good of our entire life." - John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
"I will this day try to live a simple, sincere, and serene life; repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity, and self-seeking; cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity, and the habit of holy silence; exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust, and a childlike trust in God." - John H. Vincent, fully John Heyl Vincent
"Employment gives health, sobriety, and morals. Constant employment and well-paid labor produce in a country like ours, general prosperity, content and cheerfulness." - Daniel Webster
"An hour's industry will do more to produce cheerfulness, suppress evil humors, and retrieve one's affairs, that a month's moaning. It sweetens enjoyment, and seasons our attainments with a delightful relish." - George Washington Barrow or Barrows
"Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome the, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"The cheerful live longest in years and afterwards in regards. Cheerfulness is the often offshoot of goodness." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"Cheerfulness is health; the opposite, melancholy, is disease." - Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"
"Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession." - Victor Hugo
"When Goethe says that in every human condition foes lie in wait for us, “invincible only by cheerfulness and equanimity,” he does not mean that we can at all times be really cheerful, or at a moment’s notice; but that the endeavor to look at the better side of things will produce the habit, and that this habit is the surest safeguard against the danger of sudden evils." - James Henry Leigh Hunt
"To insure good health: Eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life." - William Londen
"The highest wisdom [most manifest sign of wisdom] is continual cheerfulness; such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"One cannot have faith without optimism. Faith and hope are inseparable. Depression is a great obstacle in the spiritual life and we must strive to conquer it... Cheerfulness is one of the essential spiritual qualities we must guard ourselves against dejection, self-denunciation, or even feeling a little down-hearted... Dejection invariably distorts our vision - it magnifies our troubles." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"[On children] Above all things endeavor to breed them up in the love of virtue, and that holy plain way of it which we have lived in, that the world in no part of it get into my family. I had rather they were homely than finely bred as to outward behavior; yet I love sweetness mixed with gravity, and cheerfulness tempered with sobriety." - William Penn
"As in our lives so also in our studies, it is most becoming and most wise, so to temper gravity with cheerfulness, that the former may not imbue our minds with melancholy, nor the latter degenerate into licentiousness." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL
"The happiness of married life depends upon making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness." - John Selden
"Employment gives health, sobriety, and morals. Constant employment and well-paid labor produce, in a country like ours, general prosperity, content, and cheerfulness. Thus happy have we seen the country." - Daniel Webster
"Be cheerful always. There is no path but will be easier traveled, no load but will be lighter, no shadow on heart and brain but will lift sooner for a person of determined cheerfulness." - A. A. Willitts, fully Alphonso A. Willitts
"Six things are requisite to create a "happy home." Integrity must be the architect, and tidiness the upholsterer. It must be warmed by affection, lighted up with cheerfulness, and industry must be the ventilator, renewing the atmosphere and bringing in fresh salubrity day by day; while over all, as a protecting canopy and glory, nothing will suffice except the blessing of God." - Alexander Hamilton
"Suffering becomes beautiful when any one bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of mind." - Aristotle NULL
"Suffering becomes beautiful when anybody bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind." - Aristotle NULL
"It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new... Happiness does not reside in strength or money; it lies in rightness and manysideedness... Cheerfulness, and often Confidence, that is a mind devoid of fear, the highest good." - Democritus NULL
"Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold, but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp is of its own shining. Such a one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the season with him from the south." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in your passage through life. By the blessing of God this will prepare you for it; it will make you thoughtful and resigned without interfering with your cheerfulness." - John Henry Newman
"Cheerfulness is, in the first place, the best promoter of health. Repining and secret murmurs of heart give imperceptible strokes to those delicate fibres of which the vital parts are composed." - Joseph Addison
"Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity." - Joseph Addison
"Health and cheerfulness mutually beget each other." - Joseph Addison
"I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The former is an act, the latter a habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient; cheerfulness, fixed and permanent. Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment. Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, filling it with a steady and perpetual serenity." - Joseph Addison
"Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment: cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day-light in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity." - Joseph Addison
"The true source of cheerfulness is benevolence. The pursuits of mankind are commonly frigid and contemptible, and the mistake comes, at last, to be detected. But virtue is a charm that never fades. The soul that perceptually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful." - Parke Godwin
"Part of what we are is whom we’ve loved." - Parke Godwin
"Love and hell are alike in that respect; they are what you bring to them. The script is yours; only the props are furnished." - Parke Godwin
"That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much trust the power by which it lives?" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Health is a condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness - an open and noble temper." - Ralph Waldo Emerson