happiness on Longing

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he ...

Considered perhaps the greatest guitarist alive, Christopher Parkening appeared to have it all. Signed to an international recording deal as a teenager, Parkening traveled across the world playing bea...

We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...

Orgasms are one of the most sought-after experiences in life—which is strange, because it’s not like they last forever or even a few weeks, like a long-anticipated holiday. We’re talking about somethi...

In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...

There is a constant mental pilgrimage towards that Mecca of the human heart—happiness. . . . Everybody wants to be happy, and thinks, strives, wishes, and lives to that end.

Indeed, there comes a time in the life of every believer and of every church where a voice inside us simply asks, Now what? After we have been introduced to Jesus and have found peace with God through...

We aim for happiness but we settle for pleasure…which is only momentary.

Happiness being by all men desirable, the desire of it is naturally engrafted in every man; and is the centre of all the searchings of his heart and turnings of his life.

People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic securit...

People shoot for happiness, but they often feel empty, alone, and without meaning…People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering…Happiness wants you to think about maximizing your benefi...

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered…What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then-that is the real meeting. The other is only...

For who wishes anything for any other reason than that he may become happy?

Dawn grew up in a family in which she felt she had a fairly happy childhood. But in her adult years she struggled greatly with emotional, psychological, and physical maladies. She never felt a sense o...

People shoot for happiness, but they often feel empty, alone, and without meaning…People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering…Happiness wants you to think about maximizing your benefi...

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

There was a period when I believed stuff meant something. I thought that if you had matching side chairs and a sofa that harmonized and some beautiful lamps to light them you would have a home, that e...

[T]hose persons who are on the leading edge of evolution realize . . . that the greatest happiness in life comes, not from the comforts and pleasures that money can buy, but from the investment of the...

The most essential and active desire in human nature is to happiness. . . . There is nothing more uniform and inviolable than the natural inclination to happiness.

We pray to You our Lord, our Savior, our Merciful God, that all our sins may be forgiven. Our sins are like a straight jacket, binding us, and keeping us from relationship with You. Although we know w...

Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

A wealthy Dutch collector was searching for a rare diamond to complete his collection. When a renowned New York dealer located the perfect stone, he invited the man to come see it in person. The Du...

Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we ha...

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. RESPO...

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

Every man, whatsoever his condition, desires to be happy.

Brennan Manning shares a true story about a priest from Detroit who traveled to Ireland to visit family. One morning, he walked along the shores of Lake Killarney with his uncle. As they watched the s...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Wisdom Song It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of thi...