C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Cheerfulness
He who sings frightens away his ills.
Let cheerfulness on happy fortune wait.
Be thou of good cheer.
Nature designed us to be of good cheer.
A good laugh is sunshine in a house.
Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.
The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.
A light heart lives long.
A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows.
Cheerfulness is health; the opposite, melancholy, is disease.
Cheerfulness is the friend and helper of all good graces, and the absence of it is certainly a vice.
The way to cheerfulness is to keep our bodies in exercise and our minds at ease.
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
Cheerful looks make every dish a feast, and it is that which crowns a welcome.
The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.
What can the Creator see with greater pleasure than a happy creature?
The creed of the true saint is to make the best of life, and make the most of it.
An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with.
The burden becomes light which is cheerfully borne.
If there is a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness.
The soul that perpetually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful.
Cheerfulness is full of significance; it suggests good health, a clear conscience, and a soul at peace with all human nature.
Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
The cheerful live longest in life, and after it, in our regards. Cheerfulness is the offshot of goodness.
The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart,—that shows at the same time pearls and the soul.
Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of entrance.
Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession.
Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment and childlike mirthfulness.
Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitæ of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.
Inner sunshine warms not only the heart of the owner, but all who come in contact with it.
Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
I have found the saying of the ancients true, that better is a bright comrade on a weary road than a horse-litter.
God is glorified, not by our groans, but our thanksgivings; and all good thought and good action claim a natural alliance with good cheer.
Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen.
Youth will never live to age unless they keep themselves in breath with exercise, and in heart with joyfulness.
If the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name.
To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.
You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?
Between levity and cheerfulness there is a wide distinction; and the mind which is most open to levity is frequently a stranger to cheerfulness.
Sweetness of spirit and sunshine is famous for dispelling fears and difficulties; patience is a mighty help to the burden-bearer.
If good people would but make their goodness agreeable, and smile instead of frowning in their virtue, how many would they win to the good cause!
I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an art, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.
The lightsome countenance of a friend giveth such an inward decking to the house where it lodgeth, as proudest palaces have cause to envy the gilding.
The mind that is cheerful in its present state, will be averse to all solicitude as to the future, and will meet the bitter occurrences of life with a placid smile.
To be happy, the passions must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty.
A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
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.
Cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in strong health as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits of life.
True joy is a serene and sober motion; and they are miserably out that take laughing for rejoicing; the seat of it is within, and there is no cheerfulness like the resolutions of a brave mind.
There is no Christian duty that is not to be seasoned and set off with cheerishness, which in a thousand outward and intermitting crosses may yet be done well, as in this vale of tears.
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.
Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitters for a moment. Cheerfulness keeps up a daylight in the mind, filling it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others? You will find half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.
Be thou like the bird perched upon some frail thing, although he feels the branch bending beneath him, yet loudly sings, knowing full well that he has wings.
O God, animate us to cheerfulness! May we have a joyful sense of our blessings, learn to look on the bright circumstances of our lot, and maintain a perpetual contentedness.
Cheerfulness charms us with a spell that reaches into eternity; and we would not exchange it for all the soulless beauty that ever graced the fairest form on earth.
I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious.
A cheerful temper spreads like the dawn, and all vapors disperse before it. Even the tear dries on the cheek, and the sigh sinks away half-breathed when the eye of benignity beams upon the unhappy.
Cheerfulness bears the same friendly regard to the mind as to the body; it banishes all anxious care and discontent, soothes and composes the passions and keeps them in a perpetual calm.
Cheerfulness is always to be kept up if a man is out of pain; but mirth, to a prudent man, should always be accidental. It should naturally arise out of the occasion, and the occasion seldom be laid for it.
A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful and wit good-natured. It will lighten sickness, poverty and affliction, convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.
I live in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill-health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more when he laughs, it adds something to his fragment of life.
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; hence it is of the utmost importance that we maintain a contented, cheerful, genial disposition.
Let me play the fool; witty mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come; and let my liver rather heat with wine than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man whose blood is warm within sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster, sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice by being peevish.
Levity may be the forced production of folly or vice; cheerfulness is the natural offspring of wisdom and virtue only. The one is an occasional agitation; the other is a permanent habit. The one degrades the character; the other is perfectly consistent with the dignity of reason and the steady and manly spirit of religion.
Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet-tempered. Genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last.
Every human soul has a germ of some flowers within; and they would open if they could only find sunshine and free air to expand in. I always told you that not having enough of sunshine was what ailed the world. Make people happy, and there will not be half the quarrelling or a tenth part of the wickedness there is.
I have told you of the Spaniard who always put on his spectacles when about to eat cherries, that they might look bigger and more tempting. In like manner I make the most of my enjoyments; and though I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles, I pack them in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.
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.
Cheerfulness is a friend to grace, it puts the heart in tune to praise God. Uncheerful Christians, like the spies, bring an evil report on the good land; others suspect there is something pleasant in religion, that they who profess it hang their harps upon the willows and walk so dejectedly. Be serious, yet cheerful. Rejoice in the Lord always.
There seem to be some persons, the favorites of fortune and darlings of nature, who are born cheerful. ”A star danced” at their birth. It is no superficial visibility, but a bountiful and beneficent soul that sparkles in their eyes and smiles on their lips. Their inborn geniality amounts to genius,—the rare and difficult genius which creates sweet and wholesome character, and radiates cheer.
The industrious bee does not stop to complain that there are so many poisonous flowers and thorny branches in his road, but buzzes on, selecting the honey where he can find it, and passing quietly by the places where it is not. There is enough in this world to complain about and find fault with, if men have the disposition. We often travel on a hard and uneven road; but with a cheerful spirit, and a heart to praise God far His mercies, we may walk therein with comfort, and come to the end of our journey in peace.
Give us, O give us, the man who sings at his work! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time,—he will do it better,—he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous,—a spirit all sunshine,—graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright.
I cannot tell how much I esteem and admire your good and happy temperament. What folly not to take advantage of circumstances, and enjoy gratefully the consolations which God sends us after the afflictive dispensations which He sometimes sees proper to make us feel! It seems to me to be a proof of great wisdom to submit with resignation to the storm, and enjoy the calm when it pleases Him to give it us again.
A cheerful spirit is one of the most valuable gifts ever bestowed upon humanity by a kind Creator. It is the sweetest and most fragrant flower of the Spirit, that constantly sends out its beauty and fragrance, and blesses everything within its reach. It will sustain the soul in the darkest and most dreary places of this world. It will hold in check the demons of despair, and stifle the power of discouragement and hopelessness. It is the brightest star that ever cast its radiance over the darkened soul, and one that seldom sets in the gloom of morbid fancies and forboding imaginations.