Friday, April 10, 2009

Villette

"Happiness is the cure - a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both."
No Mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shinning far down upon us out of heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping down upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.
"Cultivate happiness?" I said briefly to the doctor: 'do you cultivate happiness? How do you manage it?"
"I am a cheerful fellow by nature: and then ill-luck has never dogged me. Adversity gave me and my mother one passing scowl and brush, but we defied her, or rather laughed at her, and she went by."
"There is no cultivation in all this."
"I do not give way to melancholy."

From Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Wordsworth Classics

2 comments:

Ashok said...

That was simply brilliant :) Your blog is proving to be a source of wisdom Noor :) Sorry I have not been online much lately! The beggining of my nearly ending acting career has kept me on my toes :P Hope you are well kiddo :)

Nema said...

This is exactly what I need (:
I really thank you for sharing those quotes, I adore quoting books and novels.
And well, life is what we make it, so this quote says it all, about happiness and melancholy.

Write on~