To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.
Interpretation
Finding joy in laughter is a measure of success in life.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that true success is not merely about achievements or wealth, but rather the ability to experience joy and share laughter with others. It implies that a happy and fulfilled life includes frequent moments of laughter and appreciation of the simple pleasures.
In practice
In a speech about wellness, I said, 'As Emerson reminds us, to laugh often and much is to have succeeded in life.'
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.
Content may dwell in all stations. To be low but above contempt may be high enough to be happy.
What other sport holds out hope of improvement to a man or a woman over fifty? True, the pros begin to falter at around forty, but it is their putting nerves that go, not their swings. For a duffer like [me], the room for improvement is so vast that three lifetimes could be spent roaming the fiarways carving away at it, convinced that perfection lies just over the next rise. And that hope, perhaps, is the kindest bliss of all that golf bestows upon its devotees.
Households, cities, countries and nations have enjoyed great happiness, when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. Such men not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind.
One thing I am convinced more and more is true, and that is this: The only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.
Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.
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