Don't get me wrong. A good marriage, adequate financial resources, even a clean home and well-behaved children do bring some measure of happiness. However, temporal blessings, as wonderful as they may be, are only a taste of the real thing. They cannot sustain inner happiness any more than eating a scrumptious meal keeps tomorrow's hunger at bay.

Most of us need time to work through pain and loss. We can find all manner of reasons for postponing forgiveness. One of these reasons is waiting for the wrongdoers to repent before we forgive them. Yet such a delay causes us to forfeit the peace and happiness that could be ours. The folly of rehashing long-past hurts does not bring happiness.

A well-constituted human being, a ‘happy one’, must perform certain actions and instinctively shrinks from other actions, he transports the order of which he is the physiological representative into his relations with other human beings and with things. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness…Everything good is instinct—and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection.

We distill happiness from garnering joy in the ordinary fragments of life, while dedicating personal effort to creating a body of work that one can look back on their deathbed and be satisfied with achieving. Happiness comes from living beautifully, which necessarily involves reason in thought and speech (logos), and leading an ethical and virtuous life devoted to achieving worthy goals.

I have heard it said that a happy childhood is a curse, because what follows can never measure up. All I can say is, those people must want too much; they can't accept that life is a series of struggles and that happiness can be found in overcoming them, drawing strength from the reserves laid down in the good years.

I asked, "You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway?""Same - same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy on journey."I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is...""Love, too," he said.

To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

“I think that fame removes true happiness. Because when you are famous, people know you for who they think you are and when you are happy, it's because people have met you and see you for who you really are. Of course, if you are not a great person, it's better to be famous. But if you have greatness, it's better to not be famous.”

“Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self. And incredulity, that too was a large part of being happy, I mean that euphoric inability fully to believe one's simple luck.”

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism.