Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
Interpretation
True happiness comes from maintaining love for what brings us joy throughout our lives.
This quote reflects the idea that the ability to retain and cherish the loves and joys of childhood indicates a wholeness of spirit. Rather than being fragmented by life's experiences, those who still hold on to their early passions and affections remain unified and enriched by those memories, leading to a fulfilling and authentic existence.
In practice
In a speech about life lessons, one might emphasize the importance of holding onto childhood joys.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
Nobody looks perfect. We have to find peace with the way we look and get on with life.
Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.
A happy New Year! Grant that I May bring no tear to any eye When this New Year in time shall end Let it be said I've played the friend, Have lived and loved and labored here, And made of it a happy year.
Before you ever receive the wonderful treasures of a happy life, you must first give. Give of yourself. Be of service to others. Only what you give can be multiplied back into your own life.
Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
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