“One can live happily on very little, I have found, if the mind and spirit have some definite objective in view.”

Finding contentment through purpose rather than material comfort · Letter to his mother, 21 December 1923

• Hope
• Joy

“In fact I have found Fame to be the most amusing companion I have ever had.”

Treating literary celebrity with amused detachment rather than reverence · Prose book, Beggars

• Fame
• Joy

“Such books are never any good to me, for, if I enjoy them, I am robbed of that joy by the thought that they are not mine.”

Capturing his intensely personal attachment to books · Prose book, Beggars

• Joy
• Reading

“I cannot now read with enjoyment books that are borrowed or are likely to be wanted back.”

A book lover's humorous confession about the pleasures of possession · Prose book, Beggars

• Joy
• Reading

“I would rather write another merry song than waste my time and temper on critics.”

Choosing creative pleasure over arguments about reputation · Autobiography, Later Days

• Fame
• Joy
• Poetry

“We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us.”

Observing how comparison with near rivals can dominate ideas of happiness · Rambler No. 164

• Fame
• Joy

“Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.”

Defining wealth partly through the scale of desire rather than possession alone · Rambler No. 163

• Joy
• Truth

“That it is every man's interest to be pleased will need little proof: that it is his interest to please others experience will inform him.”

Treating mutual agreeableness as a practical basis of social life · Rambler No. 112

• Friendship
• Joy

“Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud.”

Reminding readers that no success is wholly free from trouble · Lives of the Poets, Addison

• Despair
• Joy

“The brightest hours of prosperity have their clouds, and the stream of life, if it is not ruffled by obstructions, will grow putrid by stagnation.”

Suggesting that both difficulty and movement are inseparable from a living life · Rambler No. 165

• Joy
• Time

“Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.”

Acknowledging the double edge of the desire to know · Rambler No. 161

• Joy
• Knowledge

“Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched.”

Describing curiosity as both hunger and pleasure · Rambler No. 103

• Joy
• Knowledge

“Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness.”

Treating hope as a present good even when its object remains uncertain · Idler No. 58

• Hope
• Joy

“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.”

Presenting hope, rather than pleasure itself, as the mind's habitual destination · Rambler No. 2

• Hope
• Joy

“Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.”

Suggesting that human beings need pleasures to sweeten life's hardships · Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

• Joy
• Mortality

“The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.”

Valuing the warmth left by conversation more than memorable display · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship
• Joy

“Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

Placing human kindness alongside material necessity as a central purpose of life · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship
• Joy

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

Celebrating the inexhaustible variety of human life in a great city · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Joy
• Society

“Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.”

Giving culture its broadest value as a source of meaning in human life · Treatise, Notes towards the Definition of Culture

• Art
• Beauty
• Joy

“When a Cat adopts you, there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it and wait until the wind changes.”

A playful observation on the independence of cats and the people they choose · Letter to Polly Tandy, 1937

• Joy
• Nature

“Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”

Highlighting the paradox of mass communication and personal isolation · Interview, New York Post Magazine, 1963

• Joy
• Solitude

“Humour is also a way of saying something serious.”

Recognising comedy as a vehicle for serious perception · Note on James Thurber

• Art
• Joy
• Truth

“They were the singers of life and joy, not of death and tears.”

Describing an ancient poetic spirit that affirmed vitality even in the presence of death · Essay, The Spirit of Japanese Poetry, 'The Earliest Japanese Poetry'

• Death
• Joy
• Poetry

“I thought the morning and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I can listen to these strange insects with just as much pleasure.”

Expanding musical attention from celebrated birdsong to humble insect sound · Specimen Days, Locusts and Katy-Dids

• Joy
• Music
• Nature