happiness

See Also: CONTENTMENT, JOY, PLEASURE

1. All happiness is a chance encounter and at every moment presents itself to you like a beggar by the roadside —André Gide
2. The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick —Madame Swetchine

   See Also: DIFFICULTY

3. Dry happiness is like dry bread. We eat, but we do not dine —Victor Hugo

   In Les Miserables, the hero, Jean Valjean, continues: “I wish for the superfluous, for the useless, for the extravagant, for the too much, for that which is not good for anything.”

4. Ecstatic as a scientist who had just discovered the key to immortality —Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
5. Elated as though he had stumbled on a treasure —Brian Moore
6. A gay, light happiness, like bubbles in wine held up against the sun —Ben Ames Williams
7. Glowed with happiness, like a child with expectations of a birthday party —Frank Swinnerton
8. The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history —George Eliot
9. Happiness as wholesome as honey on the comb —John Braine
10. Happiness choked my throat like an anthem. It flowed through me like a river from the beginning of the column to its end —Aharon Megged
11. (In the midst of happiness grows a seed of unhappiness.) Happiness consumes itself like a flame. (It cannot burn forever) —August Strindberg
12. Happiness … descended upon her heart, like a cloud of morning dew in a dell of wild-flowers —Walter De La Mare
13. Happiness … filled her brain like wine —William Dean Howells
14. Happiness flits from branch to twig to branch like a hummingbird —Delmore Schwartz
15. Happiness is falling on us out of the sky … like a blanket of snow —Jean Giraudoux
16. Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts —Chinese proverb
17. Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated —Tryon Edwards
18. Happiness is like time and space; we make and measure it ourselves —George Du Maurier
19. Happiness, like air, is not something you can put in a bottle —Anon

    See Also: AIR

20. Happiness, like the pink and white anemones of my childhood, is a flower that must not be picked —Andre Maurois
21. The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent —Jean Baptiste Racine
22. Happiness struck her like a shower of rain —Eudora Welty
23. Happiness … was there like light seen through moving leaves, like touching a warm stone —Sumner Locke Elliott
24. Happy and thoughtless as an apple on a tree —George Garrett
25. Happy as a butterfly in a garden full of sunshine and flowers —Louisa May Alcott
26. Happy as a clam —American colloquialism, attributed to New England

    A variation of this found in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms is, “Happy as a clam at high water.”

27. Happy as a couple of linebackers after winning a high school game —Marge Piercy
28. Happy as a couple of cherrystone clams —George Garrett
29. Happy as a dog with a bone —Anon
30. Happy as a lover —William Wordsworth
31. (I am )happy as a mother whose good baby sleeps —May Sarton
32. Happy as a pig in clover —American colloquialism

    In the American army this gave way to “Being happy as a pig in shit.”

33. Happy as a robin when he trills —Anon American song “Love Letters”
34. Happy as a swallow —Richard Ford
35. Happy as a tick in a dog’s ear —Jay Parini
36. Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them —Sara Teasdale
37. He loved happiness like I love tea —Eudora Welty
38. When it [happiness] comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep —Willa Cather
39. I was high as taxes —Loren D. Estleman
40. I was like a river in flood … drowning in my own happiness, and buoyed up by it at the same time —Eugene Ionesco
41. Live together … as happily as two lobsters in a saucepan, two bugs on a muscle —Dylan Thomas

    See Also: RELATIONSHIPS

42. Looked like the sun at the zenith —Carlos Baker
43. Happy-looking as if he’s just heard the foreman say, “Not guilty” —William Slavens McNutt
44. Looking for happiness is like clutching the shadow or chasing the wind —Japanese proverb

    See Also: ELUSIVENESS

45. Looks like he is a kid holding his first puppy —John Wainwright
46. Moments of happiness hang like pearls on the finest silken thread, certain to be snapped, the pearls scattered away —Joan Chase
47. On the brink of our happiness we stop like someone on a drunk starting to weep —Galway Kinnell
48. The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
49. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn —Samuel Johnson, March 21, 1776
50. The vicissitudes of life touch him [a happy man] lightly, like the wind in the aspen-tree —Anton Chekhov
51. Wore his new happiness like an advertisement —Nancy Huddleston Packer