hat which he who is not wise terms happiness.
In happiness there are far more regions unknown than there are in
misfortune. The voice of misfortune is ever the same; happiness becomes
the more silent as it penetrates deeper.

When we put our misfortunes into one scale of the balance, each of us
lays, in the other, all that he deems to be happiness. The savage
flings feathers, and powder, and alcohol into the scale; civilised men
some gold, a few days of delirium; but the sage will deposit therein
countless things our eyes cannot see--all his soul, it may be, and even
the misfortune that he will have purified.

52. There is nothing in all the world more just than happiness, nothing
that will more faithfully adopt the form of our soul, or so carefully
fill the space that our wisdom clings open. Yet is it most silent of
all that there is in the world. The Angel of Sorrow can speak every
language--there is not a word but she knows; but the lips of the Angel
of Happiness are sealed, save when she tells of the savage's joys. It
is hundreds of centuries past that misfortune was cradled, but
happiness seems even now to have scarcely emerged from its infancy.
There are some men have learned to be happy; why are there none whose
great gladness has urged them to lift up their voice in the name of the
silent Archangel who has flooded their soul with light? Are we not
almost teaching happiness if we do only speak of it; invoking it, if we
let no day pass without pronouncing its name? And is it not the first
duty of those who are happy to tell of their gladness to others? All
men can learn to be happy; and the teaching of it is easy. If you live
among those who daily call blessing on life, it shall not be long ere
you will call blessing on yours. Smiles are as catching as tears; and
periods men have termed happy, were periods when there existed some who
knew of their happiness. Happiness rarely is absent; it is we that know
not of its presence. The greatest felicity avails us nothing if we know
not that we are happy; there is more joy in the smallest delight
whereof we are conscious, than in the approach of the mightiest
happiness that enters not into our soul. There are only too many who
think that what they have cannot be happiness; and therefore is it the
duty of such as are happy, to prove to the others that they only
possess what each man possesses deep down in the depths of his heart.
To be happy is only to have freed one's so