My Virtual Reading Room

Unless we think of others and do something for them, we miss one of the greatest sources of happiness.
(Ray Lyman Wilbur)

To me there is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness.  You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, are a solid little lump of ego weighing a ton.
(J.B. Priestley)

There is no happiness in having or getting, but only in giving.
(Henry Drummond)

I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to lie in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not overanxious about your personal place; that makes you tolerant because you realize your own comic fallibilities; that gives you tranquility without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself.
(Sir Hugh Walpole)

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)