Happily ever after

“ Are you not young, and fair, and good? Why should you despair? Or if you must for yourself, why for others? If you can never be happy, can you never bestow happiness [?] Oh! believe me, if you beheld on lips pale with grief one smile of joy and gratitude, and knew that you were parent of that smile, and that without you it had never been, you would feel so pure and warm a happiness that you would wish to live for ever again and again to enjoy the same pleasure [.] ”

“ But I to cease from these thoughts; for we to face our life brave and wise, and to take both the sorrow and the joy unto our developing, and to hold up the face with courage when that Grief doth come anigh; and to see that we grow not to bitterness, but unto sweet wholesomeness. And there to be Joy again, and we then the better abled to have that delight into our hearts; for how shall Joy ever to come truly again to that heart which bitterness hath made a place for the abode of sorrow. ”

“ Apollo, as the line of fortune is called, is a good one to talk at length on; you can tell every subject that he or she has had bad luck, but that fortune will follow; that he or she will marry a pretty girl, or a handsome man as the case may be, live in New York if already living in the country and the other way about—for everybody wants to live anywhere except the place he is in—and don’t forget to say “you’ll live happily ever after.” ”

“ Why should it be impossible for us to spend here the whole of our life as we have spent the last month, always in good health, always loving one another, without ever feeling any other want or any weariness? Then, to crown that happiness, which would certainly be immense, all that would be wanted would be to die together, in an advanced age, speaking to the last moment of our pleasant recollections. Surely that felicity would have been lasting. Death would not interrupt it, for death would end it. ”

“ It is a melancholy pleasure to the dry, harsh afterthoughts of later life, to think one has been thus loved; and one marvels, when one considers what one is now, how it could have ever been! That love of ours was never made for after years! ”

“ Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future,—never reached but always coming. ”

“ And claim once more the gladness of the bygone long-ago.
No loved ones ever vanish from the grate fire's merry throng;
No hands in death are folded and no lips are stilled to song.
All the friends who were are living—like the sparks that fly about
They come romping out to greet me with the same old merry shout,
Till it seems to me I'm playing once again on boyhood's stage,
Where there's no such thing as sorrow and there's no such thing as age.
I can be the care-free schoolboy! I can play the lover, too! ”

“ It was happiness, it was perfect happiness. They had now what they had always wanted to have, the union which had been impossible while they lived. Unconscious whether he thought the words or spoke them aloud, he said, "No two people have ever been so happy as we have been. No one has ever loved as we have loved." ”

“ Hope ever causes chords long forgotten to resound, and existence becomes once again pleasant as of yore. Such were the feelings which animated me during that night of happiness when, thanks to you alone, everything was sheer joy. ”

“ When I think of the past, it is there where my thoughts travel at once. How relate to you the particulars of our happiness? When destiny protects us, happiness is composed of a thousand charming nothings that the hearts of others cannot understand. During those three months I was entirely happy; I wished to live for ever in this charming retreat for him that I loved a thousand times more than myself. I wished to abandon the opera, that opera that the Count de Melun could not make me forget for a week! ”

“ Yes, but perfect happiness cannot last long. Hell gapes on the threshold of heaven, and one step plunges us from ethereal light into erebian darkness. So it has ever been with me in this chequered life of mine. A fortnight after that memorable night of unbearable anguish and of thrilling delight, I awoke in the midst of felicity to find myself in thorough wretchedness. ”

“ Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn’t happiness last for ever? For ever wasn’t a bit too long. ”

“ Into their romance, into their world of little things, their joys of the moment, their happiness of the hour, had suddenly descended a great and lasting joy, the happiness of the great, grave issues of life—a happiness so deep, so intense, as to thrill them with a sense of solemnity and wonder. ”

“ Therese, ever happy, smiling, and joyous in the midst of pain, in spite of your extreme sensitiveness to suffering, I rejoice with you in the glorious triumph which you have won over self through your tender love of God. Obtain for me the grace to walk in your footsteps, that I may always find a sincere delight in that which gives joy to God, even though it be the very fact of my being utterly deprived of all sensible joy. ”

“ Once more, my honoured friend, farewell!—Born to be happy without the world, to that peaceful happiness which the world has not to bestow! Envy never scowled on thy life, nor hatred smiled on thy grave. ”

“ When that life should come to which I secretly looked forward,—when my soul should bound into a more radiant atmosphere, where the clouds, if any were, should be all gold- and silver-tinted, and where my sorrows, love-colored, were to be sweeter than other people's joys,—in that life, there would be moments of sweet abandonment to the simple sense of happiness. ”

“ For if I have grieved of late yet have I known joys undreamed and have looked and seen what Happiness is like unto, wherefore I do not repine that Happiness hath not stayed. Love and I have lived so long estranged that now methinks I am not fitted, so do I go back to the things I understand. ”

“ She closed her eyes, yielding for one breathless instant to the passion of his embrace. Her dream and her longing melted swiftly into realisation, and she told herself that the agony of joy was sharper than that of grief. This was like nothing that she had imagined, and she felt an impulse to fly back into the uncertainty that she had left—to gain time in which to prepare for the happiness which she told herself was hers. ”

“ The whole world are after happiness. It is not in gold and silver, but it is in peace and love. Did I say love? Yes. You watch your own feelings when you hear delightful sounds, for instance, or when you see anything beautiful. ”

“ Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness, of which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. ”

“ The northern lights shot their joyous bands across the sky in front of him.
"I'll name you before you go," he said drunkenly. "I'll call you happiness; for after youth, happiness is the next sacrifice." ”

“ My own happiness has been trampled under foot; my own love has been torn from me. Shall I live to see a happiness of others, which is of my making—a love renewed, which is of my bringing back? Oh merciful Death, let me see it before your arms enfold me, before your voice whispers to me, "Rest at last!" ”

“ The radiant happiness which welled within her, in seemingly inexhaustible volume, appeared to fill the universe. Often, with small success, she would attempt to realise the joy that had come into her life. ”

“ But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. ”

“ I thought too of what Sergey Mikhaylych would say, if he knew what I had done; and I was glad to think that no one would ever find out. I was so happy, and I felt myself and everyone else so bad, and yet was so kindly disposed to myself and to all the world, that the thought of death came to me as a dream of happiness. I smiled and prayed and wept, and felt at that moment a burning passion of love for all the world, myself included. ”

“ Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever shining benevolence. ”

“ So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination, and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. ”

“ As I recall, this morning, the fresh and living delights revealed to me in that hour, I am conscious of a joy which makes me conceive of true love as an ocean of everlasting and ever-new experiences, into which we may plunge with increasing delight. ”

“ My heart capable of love, and ready to love, will soon cease to beat... And can it be that it will be silenced forever, without having even once tasted of happiness, without having a single time swelled beneath the sweet burden of joy? ”

“ It must be made a memory for after life to look back upon, not with shuddering repulsion, but with delight at the thought of the generous love striving to bring happiness once more into an ailing life. ”

“ Dear, I'm not only trying to do it, but the greater part of the time I do do it. It's only very seldom that my soul faints and the tears come. I am really happy! You are not going to be able to comprehend how happy I am. Every one who wants anything in this world always wants it in such a narrow, finite way,—no one can understand joy too limitless to be finite. ”

“ Will you, indeed, share all my troubles and sorrows, nor deem them, when the first full joy of love is past, unworthy of your attention—your cares, too great to admit of such trifles, claiming your consideration? If you will, and also let me share all your joys and griefs in perfect sympathy and love, then—then my dream of happiness will be fulfilled; but if, in years to come," she continued, with suppressed emotion, "you should change, and a harshness or indifference take the place of sympathy and love, Oh I would wish to die before that day!" ”

“ And when, for the first time, Love also entered into his life, the world seemed to be transfigured. Although he had suffered much and lost much, he found it possible to dream of a future in which he might make for himself a home, and know once more the meaning of happiness. ”

“ I have a strange sensation at my heart, which your altered appearance translates into a precursor of happiness. My spirit seems to have burst from the trammels of earth, and to revel in an atmosphere where love and hope are fadeless. You do not smile, love! Does not your heart echo my joy? Does not the same happy presentiment pervade your heart, and gild the future in brilliant colors? ”

“ As she has always possessed my heart during my lifetime, I wish it, after my death, to be as happy as a heart can be in the absence of the beloved one, that is to say, in company with something that has been her’s. ”

“ The passionate joy, the passionate sorrow, had passed away, or rather, had been offered at last as a willing sacrifice, and the loving kindly spirit had found sweetness in life without the first, while much anxiety, much trying disappointment, had succeeded to the second. ”

“ How I shall rejoice at the first letter from you which does not speak of leave taking but of meeting, never to be parted again; not of death, but of a life full of happiness."
We were standing on the stairs in the twilight. We clasped each other's hands and promised to bear this last trial cheerfully. I pressed him once more to my heart before I had to surrender him again; but we both firmly trusted that He who had granted us this happiness would also grant us a future to enjoy it. We shall not in vain have passed from death to life.... ”

“ His impassioned “Mine! mine!” filled my cup to overflowing. Something of the ecstasy of living entered my soul; which, in spite of all I have suffered since, recreated the world for me and made all that went before but the prelude to the new life, the new joy.
Oh, I was happy, happy, perhaps too happy! As the conservatory filled and we passed back into the adjoining room, the glimpse I caught of myself in one of the mirrors startled me into thinking so. ”

“ Was the next moment hidden on his bosom.
But there was happiness even in that farewell,
Affection and deep confidence,
Tenderness, hope—for Love lights Hope,—and tears,
Delicious tears! the heart's own dew. ”

“ There followed three years of happiness wrung from wretchedness, years in which the splendor of love would blaze through the shame of concealment, when joy was always breaking out through fear, when moments of beautiful peace trembled there in the ugly web of circumstance. ”

“ That, when it is over, we shall meet again where there is no marriage, where there is nothing gross, where love perfect and immortal reigns and passion is forgotten. There that we love each other will make no heart sore, not even hers whom here, perhaps, we have wronged; there will be no jealousies, since each and all, themselves happy in their own way and according to their own destinies, will rejoice in the happiness of others. ”

“ A thousand, thousand dreams of happiness are insignificant to the thrill which courses through the veins when that centre of thy soul is touched by love. Forever and forever after, wilt thou be a different being ”

“ She longed to fling up the shades, to let in the sunshine, to drive out the dust and cobwebs, to put fresh flowers in the place of the dead ones. She longed, as she said to herself with a smile, "to get her hands on the room." If she could only change all this hopelessness into happiness! If she could only restore pleasure here, or at least the semblance of peace! "It is just as well that all of us can't feel things this much," she reflected. ”