WIST Quotations

Addison, Joseph -- Essay (1712-05-24), The Spectator, No. 387

Dave — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 16:34:27 +0000

Cheerfulness is, in the first place, the best promoter of health. Repinings, and secret murmurs of heart, give imperceptible strokes to those delicate fibres of which the vital parts are composed, and wear out the machine insensibly; not to mention those violent ferments which they stir up in the blood, and those irregular disturbed motions which they raise in the animal spirits.

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-05-24), The Spectator, No. 387
(Source)

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36
(Source)

Collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 3 (1881)