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It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time — and they feel that you are trying — to make them happy. And you rarely can make another happy, unless you are happy yourself.

— Dinah Craik A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)

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Happiness

More quotes by Dinah Craik

Meek — as the meek that shall inherit earth,
Pure — as the pure in heart that shall see God.

Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)

Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth.

A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)

Do you recognize what you were born to be? Not only a nobleman, but a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man — man, made in the image of God.

John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)

There never was night that had no morn.

Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)

Happiness is not an end — it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence.

A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)

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The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously.

Tom Robbins High Times interview (2002)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy.

Spider Robinson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Dinah Craik (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.