Cheerfulness Quotes

As for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against depression without, and not quite succeeding. The look suggested issolation, but it revealed something more. As Usual with bright natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within a ephemeral human carcase shone out of him like a ray. ~ Thomas Hardy

Cheerfulness prepares a glorious mind for all the noblest acts. ~ Elizabeth Ann Seton

Happiness comes to those who are moving toward something they want very much to happen. And it almost always involves making someone else happy. ~ Earl Nightingale

Growing old and cheerful means learning to live with all the contradictions. ~ Marty Rubin

Cheerfulness is irritating, but it suits some people. Some people are born for sunlight and orange peel smiles and running on the beach and wild flowers in their hair.

Other people are born for nonexistence. ~ C.G. Drews

Remain cheerful, For nothing destructive can pierce through The solid wall of cheerfulness. ~ Sri Chinmoy

The most certain sign of wisdom is continual cheerfulness; her state is like the things above the moon, always clear and serene. ~ Michel De Montaigne

The more a psychologist - a born, an unavoidable psychologist and soul-diviner - turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always before one's eyes. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Cheerfulness is a policy; happiness is a talent. ~ Mason Cooley

Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness. ~ Adam Smith

Duiri Tal, a small lake, lies cradled on the hill above Okhimath, at a height of 8,000 feet. It was a favourite spot of one of Garhwal's earliest British Commissioners, J.H. Batten, whose administration continued for twenty years (1836-56). He wrote: The day I reached there, it was snowing and young trees were laid prostrate under the weight of snow; the lake was frozen over to a depth of about two inches. There was no human habitation, and the place looked a veritable wilderness. The next morning when the sun appeared, the Chaukhamba and many other peaks extending as far as Kedarnath seemed covered with a new quilt of snow, as if close at hand. The whole scene was so exquisite that one could not tire of gazing at it for hours. I think a person who has a subdued settled despair in his mind would all of a sudden feel a kind of bounding and exalting cheerfulness which will be imparted to his frame by the atmosphere of Duiri Tal. This ~ Ruskin Bond

Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They say just the opposite -- they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breathe out, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy, positivity, happiness, cheerfulness."

Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery and suffering of all the beings of the world -- past, present and future. And when you breathe out, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all the benediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the method of compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings. And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of the world inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms the energy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed into blissfulness... then pour it out.

Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like to do it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods -- simple, and it brings immediate results. Do it today, and see. That is one of the approaches of Buddha and all his disciples. Atisha is one of his disciples, in the same tradition, in the same line. Buddha says again and again to his disciples, "IHI PASSIKO: come and see!" They are very sc ~ Osho

I remember what Ben Jonson said: 'I've studied all the philosophies and all the theologies but cheerfulness keeps breaking through. ~ Leonard Cohen

In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to Spirit. ~ Wayne Dyer

You've achieved cheerfulness the day you realize that no matter what's happening around you, being anything other than cheerful will not make it better. ~ Tony Robbins

Mirth, and even cheerfulness, when employed as remedies in low spirits, are like hot water to a frozen limb. ~ Benjamin Rush

Optimism: That effervescent, blindingly- bright, perky, chipper, twittering quality you want to squash out of annoying people. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I think that is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanks-living. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by a submission of our desires to His will. ~ Charles Spurgeon

One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you're depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong. ~ Mindy Kaling

But just let the masters of the world -- princes, kings, emperors, powerful majesties, invincible conquerors -- let them only try to make the people dance on a certain day each year in a set place. This is not much to ask, but I dare swear that they will not succeed, whereas, if the humblest missionary comes to such a spot, he will make himself obeyed two thousand years after his death. Every year the people meet together around a rustic church in the name of St. John, St. Martin, St. Benedict, and so on; they come filled with boisterous yet innocent cheerfulness; religion sanctifies this joy and the joy embellishes religion: they forget their sorrows; at night, they think of the pleasure to come on the same day next year, and this date is stamped on their memory.

By the side of this picture put that of the French leaders who have been vested with every power by a shameful Revolution and yet cannot organize a simple fete. ~ Joseph De Maistre

For a cheerful spirit, a dark street is just another bright street! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

A pessimist asked God for relief. Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness, said God. No, replied the petitioner, I wish you to create something that would justify them. The world is all created,said God, but you have overlooked something ~ Ambrose Bierce

I must consider more closely this cycle of good and bad days which I find coursing within myself. Passion, attachment, the urge to action, inventiveness, performance, order all alternate and keep their orbit; cheerfulness, vigor, energy, flexibility and fatigue, serenity as well as desire. Nothing disturbs the cycle for I lead a simple life, but I must still find the time and order in which I rotate. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Don't you ever dream … about another … more beautiful life where nobody is envious of others, … where people treat other people only with cheerfulness and consideration? Have you never thought that the world might be a totality, and that it might be beneficial and salutary to honour this unity of all things? ~ Hermann Hesse

Above all things endeavor to breed them up 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 we're homely than finely bred as to outward behavior; yet I love sweetness mixed with gravity, and cheerfulness tempered with sobriety. ~ William Penn

Whereas my grandfather was getting used to a much more terrifying reality. Holding my hand to keep his balance, as trees and bushes made strange, sliding movements in his peripheral vision, Lefty was confronting the possibility that consciousness was a biological accident. Though he'd never been religious, he realized now that he'd always believed in the soul, in a force of personality that survived death. But as his mind continued to waver, to short-circuit, he finally arrived at the cold-eyed conclusion, so at odds with his youthful cheerfulness, that the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

It was as if California, specifically the Bay Area, had most of what Nietzsche once defined as the 'precondition' of Buddhism: a very mild climate, very gentle and liberal customs, no militarism; and that it is the higher and even learned classes in which the movement has its home. The supreme goal is cheerfulness, stillness, absence of desire, and this goal is achieved.1 ~ Pankaj Mishra

Thousands of reason are too less to make me sad but a single reason is enough to make me smile. ~ Raaz Ojha

What time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life? ~ Leo Tolstoy

These days my sole desire is that our lives should be simple and straightforward, that all around us there should be peace and cheerfulness, that our way of life should be unostentatious and full of bounty, that our needs should be small and our aims high and our efforts unselfish and our work for others more important than our work for ourselves. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

About the New Life Meher Baba wrote:
This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing; by those who rely wholly and solely on God, and who love God purely for the sake of loving; who believe in the lovers of God and in the reality of Manifestation, and yet do not expect any spiritual or material reward; who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly face all hardships with one hundred percent cheerfulness, and give no importance to caste, creed and religious ceremonies. This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no one to live it. ~ Meher Baba

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 ~ William Ellery Channing

If there is a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Self reliance, always. And cheerfulness. ~ Marcus Aurelius

There was nothing very cheerful about the cold, and yet there was an air of cheerfulness that the cleverest summer air and brightest summer sun couldn't have compared with. Everyone was in this together. ~ David Levithan

In Transylvania it was memories of the Romanian revolt that stalked the Hungarian aristocratic imagination.. In Galicia it was memories of Tarnow that performed a similar service for the surviving Polish noble families. Both societies shared something of the brittle, sports-obsessed cheerfulness of the British in India - or indeed of Southerners in the pre-1861 United States. These were societies which could resort to any level of violence in support of racial supremacy. Indeed, an interesting global history could be written about the ferocity of a period which seems, very superficially, to be so 'civilized'. Southern white responses to Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion in 1831, with Turner himself flayed, beheaded and quartered, can be linked to the British blowing rebel Indians to pieces from the mouths of cannons in 1857. ~ Simon Winder

The Art of Success ... Success is ninety-nine percent mental attitude. It calls for love, joy, optimism, confidence, serenity, poise, faith, courage, cheerfulness, imagination, initiative, tolerance, honesty, humility, patience, and enthusiasm ... Success is having the courage to meet failure without being defeated. It is refusing to let present loss interfere with your long-range goal ... Success is relative and individual and personal. It is your answer to the problem of making your minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years add up to a great life. ~ Wilferd Peterson

Blessed be those souls who are glad! They are a salve for sorrow and fatigue. A sun in days of darkness, a joy in sorrow, a ray of heaven shining through the uncertainness of earth. ~ Candace Wheeler

Colonel Brandon was now as happy, as all those who best loved him, believed he deserved to be; - in Marianne he was consoled for every past affliction; - her regard and her society restored his mind to animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend. Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby. ~ Jane Austen

To make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The happy-go-lucky have the best luck. ~ Marty Rubin

Wherefore give all diligence to the Spirit's motion and leadings, what it moves against, and what it leads to; for now will God make all things new: A new creation, new heavens, and new earth, and new heart and mind, and a new law, a new man to walk therein with his Maker with cheerfulness, and the old bonds are broken by the Spirit's leading, and to serve in newness of spirit. ~ James Nayler

Much of the possibility of being cheerful comes from the faculty of throwing oneself beyond oneself ... ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Let us always be cheerful and never make the mistake of growing up. ~ Marty Rubin

To live greatly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility. ~ Thomas S. Monson

That is something we must never forget; although others may show heroism in the war or against the Germans, our helpers display heroism in their cheerfulness and affection. ~ Anne Frank

It was the serene cheerfulness of a man who has no nightmares, who feels at peace with himself and everyone else. They [Americans] were almost all of them like that. And it definitely got Maigret's back up. It made him think of clothing that was too neat, too clean, too well-pressed. ~ Georges Simenon

The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age. ~ Plato

Man is always at the crossroads: each step and there is a choice, each step and you can go wrong or right. When sadness and cheerfulness confront you, always choose cheerfulness. When seriousness and playfulness confront you, always choose playfulness. And remember: we become whatsoever we choose. It is simply a question of choice. ~ Osho

What can the Creator see with greater pleasure than a happy creature? ~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

To be cheerful in this world one must have a strong sense of reality. ~ Marty Rubin

I love a minister whose faces invite me to make him my friend. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait. ~ Walt Whitman

It's a lot of fun coming out for a practice round and having the crowd behind you and cheering you on (a few) days before the event. ~ Annika Sorenstam

For all the talk about the need to be a likable "team player," many people work in a fairly cutthroat environment that would seem to be especially challenging to those who possess the recommended traits. Cheerfulness, upbeatness, and compliance: these are the qualities of subordinates
of servants rather than masters, women (traditionally, anyway) rather than men. After advising his readers to overcome the bitterness and negativity engendered by frequent job loss and to achieve a perpetually sunny outlook, management guru Harvey Mackay notes cryptically that "the nicest, most loyal, and most submissive employees are often the easiest people to fire." Given the turmoil in the corporate world, the prescriptions of niceness ring of lambs-to-the-slaughter. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Exercise and application produce order in our affairs, health of body, cheerfulness of mind, and these make us precious to our friends ~ Thomas Jefferson

The Knights' Code," which he had learned by heart from Scouting for Boys, a book he frequently turned to in times of uncertainty, even now in his self-exile from the movement, demanded that "Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace." He supposed entertaining Izzie was one of those occasions. It was certainly laborious. ~ Kate Atkinson

I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving; so you can't have it." Buy my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. ~ George Bernard Shaw

When you drop your unnecessary things, you finally can swoop and fly in vast space. It is so blue, so bright, and so nice, so airy and fresh. You can stretch your wings and breathe the air. You can do anything you want. You have experienced cheerfulness and joy, and finally the bliss of freedom occurs in you. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent. ~ Emile Durkheim

I don't know what to do," he said. "No harm in that. I've never known what to do," said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. "Been completely at a loss my whole life." He hesitated. "I think it's called being human, or something. ~ Terry Pratchett

The happiness of married life depends upon making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness. ~ John Selden

Do not allow darkness and gloom to enter into your hearts. I want to give you a rule by which you may know that the spirit which you have is the right spirit. The Spirit of God produces cheerfulness, joy, light and good feelings. Whenever you feel gloomy and despondent and are downcast, unless it be for your sins, you may know it is not the Spirit of God which you have. Fight against it and drive it out of your heart. The Spirit of God is a spirit of hope; it is not a spirit of gloom. ~ George Q. Cannon

The Excellence Manifesto #1

I pledge myself to patience.
I pledge myself to boldness.
I pledge myself to kindness.
I pledge myself to prudence.
I pledge myself to cheerfulness.
I pledge myself to genuineness.
I pledge myself to goodness.

I commit to skilfulness.
I commit to diligence.
I commit to resourcefulness.
I commit to excellence.
I commit to perseverance.
I commit to brilliance.
I commit to transcendence. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

It is a great disgrace to religion, to imagine that it is an enemy to mirth and cheerfulness, and a severe exacter of pensive looks and solemn faces. ~ Walter Scott

That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful. ~ H.G.Wells

[Grateful] Cheerfulness is health; its opposite, [ungrateful] melancholy, is disease. ~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. ~ Samuel Smiles

Nature designed us to be of good cheer. ~ Douglas William Jerrold

[T]he kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if we should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Cheerfulness is a very great help in fostering the virtue of charity. Cheerfulness itself is a virtue. ~ Lawrence G. Lovasik

Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his
heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had
not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to
become a blossom and had to shine.
, the wound was not blossoming yet, his heart was still fighting his
fate, cheerfulness and victory were not yet shining from his suffering.
Nevertheless, he felt hope ~ Hermann Hesse

Men achieve cheerfulness by moderation in pleasure and by proportion in their life excess and deficiency are apt to fluctuate and cause great changes in the soul. And souls which change over great intervals are neither stable nor cheerful. So one should set one's mind on what is possible and be content with what one has taking little account of those who are admired and envied and not dwelling on them in thought but one should consider the lives of those who are in distress thinking of their grievous sufferings so that what one has and possesses will seem great and enviable and one will cease to suffer in one's soul through the desire for more. ~ Democritus

Go through life with fear and you will feel helplessness. Go through life with anger and you will feel hatefulness. Go through life with envy and you will feel bitterness. Go through life with hope and you will feel gladness. Go through life with gratitude and you will feel cheerfulness. Go through life with love and you will feel blessedness. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed, and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life, as indeed over anything. ~ Albert J. Nock

Let us be, then, warriors of the heart, and enlist in our inner cause the virtues we have acquired through blood and sweat in the sphere of conflict - courage, patience, selflessness, loyalty, fidelity, self-command, respect for elders, love of our comrades (and of the enemy), perseverance, cheerfulness in adversity and a sense of humor, however terse or dark. ~ Steven Pressfield

Cheerfulness has a directly beneficial influence upon health. ~ Grenville Kleiser

Mrs. O'Dowd, the good housewife, arrayed in curl papers and a camisole, felt that her duty was to act, and not to sleep, at this juncture. "Time enough for that," she said, "when Mick's gone"; and so she packed his travelling valise ready for the march, brushed his cloak, his cap, and other warlike habiliments, set them out in order for him; and stowed away in the cloak pockets a light package of portable refreshments, and a wicker-covered flask or pocket-pistol, containing near a pint of a remarkably sound Cognac brandy, of which she and the Major approved very much; ... Mrs. O'Dowd woke up her Major, and had as comfortable a cup of coffee prepared for him as any made that morning in Brussels. And who is there will deny that this worthy lady's preparations betokened affection as much as the fits of tears and hysterics by which more sensitive females exhibited their love, and that their partaking of this coffee, which they drank together while the bugles were sounding the turn-out and the drums beating in the various quarters of the town, was not more useful and to the purpose than the outpouring of any mere sentiment could be? The consequence was, that the Major appeared on parade quite trim, fresh, and alert, his well-shaved rosy countenance, as he sate on horseback, giving cheerfulness and confidence to the whole corps. All the officers saluted her when the regiment marched by the balcony on which this brave woman stood, and waved them a cheer as they passed; and I daresay ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with only the added difficulty that whereas families are at least well-recognised and sanctioned loci for hysteria reminiscent of scenes from Medea, office life typically proceeds behind a mask of shallow cheerfulness, leaving workers grievously unprepared to handle the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues. ~ Alain De Botton

Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know. ~ Charles Kingsley

Courage, cheerfulness, and a desire to work depends mostly on good nutrition. ~ Jacob Moleschott

What the patriarch did early in the morning, after the family festivities, it will be well for the believer to do for himself before he rests tonight. Amid the cheerfulness of household gatherings, it is easy to slide into sinful levities, and to forget our avowed character as Christians. It ought not to be so - but so it is - that our days of feasting are very seldom days of sanctified enjoyment - but too frequently degenerate into unhallowed mirth ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Old enough to remember the arrival of 'Have a nice day', Patrick could only look with alarm on the hyperinflation of 'Have a great one'. Where would this Weimar of bullying cheerfulness end? 'You have a profound and meaningful day now. ~ Edward St. Aubyn

It is the surgeon's duty to tranquillize the temper, to beget cheerfulness, and to impart confidence of recovery. ~ Astley Cooper

Cheerfulness is one infectious disease everyone should contract. ~ Lamees Alhassar

Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as if most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meager children; and lovers, with such a word around then and before them, loved and hoped. ~ Charles Dickens

I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness. ~ Charles Dickens

Cheerfulness consists in not regarding things as our own, but as entrusted to us by God for the benefit of our fellow-servants. It consists in scattering them abroad generously with joy and magnanimity, not reluctantly or under compulsion. ~ Symeon The New Theologian

Well, Milwaukee is a special place to me. It's where I started my career playing in Appleton. Getting cheered on the road is something I haven't been use to. ~ Alex Rodriguez

A heart full of courage and cheerfulness needs a little danger from time to time, or the world gets unbearable. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you will only consider, you will remember many a person of whom the world never heard and will never hear, whose years have been as full of generosity, loyalty to duty, faith in God, fidelity to every day's work, as those of Franklin or Garfield, Lincoln or Emerson. They, also, have put their hands to the plough and have not looked back. Having made up their minds to what ought to be done, they did not hesitate, did not procrastinate, did not worry or grow anxious, but faithfully performed the duty of the hour. They had faith in Providence, and so did with their might what their hands found to do. They gave, and it was given to them again, "full measure, pressed down and running over." They did good, hoping for nothing again, and the reward came in lives full of content; in cheerfulness, peace, and satisfaction. ~ James Clarke

The men in my mother's life were like priests, ministering to her. They loved her in a way I hope I am never loved, my father, Sydney Goldsmith, and Dr. Constantine, who looked after her for so many years. It is why I seek the company of the young, the urbane, the polished, the ambitious, the prodigiously gifted, like Nick and his friends. In my mother's world, at least in those latter days, the men were kind, shy, easily damaged, too sensitive to her hurts. I never want to meet such men again. In a way I prefer them to be impervious to me. I can no longer endure the lost look in the eye, the composure too easily shattered, the waning hope. I now require people to be viable, durable. I try to catch hold of their invulnerability and apply it to myself. I want to feel that the world is hard enough to withstand knocks, as well as to inflict them. I want evidence of good health and good luck and the people who enjoy both. These priestly ministrations, that simple childish cheerfulness, that delicacy of intention, that sigh immediately suppressed, that welcoming of routine attentions, that reliance on old patterns, that fidelity, that constancy, and the terror behind all of these things…No more. ~ Anita Brookner

You see, King, we have a legend - I used to believe that it was all fairy-tale rubbish and empty smoke. It is a legend about how such things as war and death and despair were common in our country at one time. These terrible words, which we have long since stopped using in our language, can be read in collections of our old tales, and they sound awful to us and even a little ridiculous. Today I've learned that these tales are all true ... But now tell me, don't you have in your soul a sort of intimation that you're not doing the right thing? Don't you have a yearning for bright, serene gods, for sensible and cheerful leaders and mentors? Don't you ever dream in your sleep about another, more beautiful life where nobody is envious of others, where reason and order prevails, where people treat other people only with cheerfulness and considerations? ~ Hermann Hesse

Why not make cheerfulness, outrageousness, playfulness a new priority for yourself? Make feeling good your expectation. You don't have to have a reason to feel good - you're alive; you can feel good for no reason at all! ~ Anthony Robbins

Don't be too anxious on my account. I have but one wish - to be in good health; the tedium is a passing matter, and cheerfulness depends in the last resort upon myself. Human beings have an incredible amount of endurance and will to live; I should never have expected to find so much in myself; now I know it from experience. Farewell! I hope that these few lines will give you much pleasure. Greet every one you see whom I have known - forget no one. I have not forgotten anybody. What can the children be thinking of me, and how do they explain to themselves my disappearance ? Farewell. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Perhaps nothing is so depressing an index of the inhumanity of the male-supremacist mentality as the fact that the more genial human traits are assigned to the underclass: affection, response to sympathy, kindness, cheerfulness. ~ Kate Millett

They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o'-shanter which wasn't any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.
I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered:
You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective? ~ Raymond Chandler

Suddenly Ammu hoped that it had been him that Rahel saw him in the march. She hoped it had been him that raised his flag and knotted arm in anger. She hoped that under his careful cloak of cheerfulness he housed a living breathing anger against the smug, ordered world that she raged against. ~ Arundhati Roy