Saturday, November 26, 2022

Happiness is a ridinghood in winter


 Good housewives all the winter's rage despise,
Defended by the ridinghood's disguise.
 
-- John Gay (1685-1732)

Thursday, November 24, 2022

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Happiness is oats in England, if you are a horse

 

A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
 

-- Samuel Johnson

Monday, October 31, 2022

Happiness is retiring to the country with your friends


 All hail, ye fields, where constant peace attends!
All hail, ye sacred, solitary groves!
All hail, ye books, my true, my real friends,
Whose conversation pleases and improves!

-- William Walsh (1663-1708)

Friday, October 14, 2022

Happiness is a silver saucepan


 If your butter when melted tastes of brass, it is your master's fault who will not allow you a silver saucepan. 

-- Jonathan Swift

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Happiness is freedom from anxiety


 To be happy, is not only to be freed from the pains and diseases of the body, but from anxiety and vexation of spirit; not only to enjoy the pleasures of sense, but peace of conscience, and tranquillity of mind.

-- John Tillotson (1630-1694)

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Happiness is Enrico Caruso singing Verdi, Rigoletto: Act III: La donna é mobile

 


Woman is flighty.
Like a feather in the wind,
she changes in voice
and in thought.

Always a lovely,
pretty face,
in tears or in laughter,
it is untrue.

Refrain
Woman is fickle.
Like a feather in the wind,
she changes her words
and her thoughts!

Always miserable
is he who trusts her,
he who confides in her
his unwary heart!

Yet one never feels
fully happy
who from that bosom
does not drink love!

Refrain
Woman is fickle.
Like a feather in the wind,
she changes her words,
and her thoughts!

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Happiness is grape season


 Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne,
In thy vats our cares be drown'd.

-- William Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 7

Sunday, August 21, 2022

Apples harvested too early can taste like the soil


 

 The cyder at first is very luscious, but if ground more early, it is more racy.

-- John Mortimer (c.1656-1736), The Whole Art of Husbandry

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Happiness is 15 minutes of solar noon sunlight


  For most white people, a half-hour in the summer sun in a bathing suit can initiate the release of 50,000 IU (1.25 mg) vitamin D into the circulation within 24 hours of exposure; this same amount of exposure yields 20,000–30,000 IU in tanned individuals and 8,000–10,000 IU in dark-skinned people. ... spending a few minutes outdoors (3–15 minutes for whites and 15–30 minutes for blacks) when the sun is highest in the sky, with 40% of the skin area exposed.
 

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Friday, August 12, 2022

Happiness is neither poverty nor riches


Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, "Who is the LORD?" or lest I be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God.

-- Proverbs 30:8f.

Friday, July 29, 2022

Tuesday, July 19, 2022