HAPPINESS • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Happiness

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/hˈæpinəs/ Listen

noun

Happiness n.

1.

Good luck; good fortune; prosperity. "All happiness bechance to thee in Milan!"

2.

An agreeable feeling or condition of the soul arising from good fortune or propitious happening of any kind; the possession of those circumstances or that state of being which is attended with enjoyment; the state of being happy; contentment; joyful satisfaction; felicity; blessedness.

3.

Fortuitous elegance; unstudied grace; used especially of language. "Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, For there's a happiness, as well as care."

Synonyms: Happiness, Felicity, Blessedness, Bliss. Happiness is generic, and is applied to almost every kind of enjoyment except that of the animal appetites; felicity is a more formal word, and is used more sparingly in the same general sense, but with elevated associations; blessedness is applied to the most refined enjoyment arising from the purest social, benevolent, and religious affections; bliss denotes still more exalted delight, and is applied more appropriately to the joy anticipated in heaven. "O happiness! our being's end and aim!" "Others in virtue place felicity, But virtue joined with riches and long life; In corporal pleasures he, and careless ease." "His overthrow heaped happiness upon him; For then, and not till then, he felt himself, And found the blessedness of being little."

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Etymology of 'Happiness'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Happiness" Quotes from Famous Books

... frippery; and all this exclusive of her personal clothing. The first third of such a life is spent in struggling and imploring; the next third, in getting a foothold; the last third, in defending it. If happiness is frantically grasped, it is because it is so rare, so long desired, and found at last only amid the odious fictitious pleasures and smiles ...

— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... sensitive, what arms has youth with which to prevail? What but the power to keep still and hold on? Nothing was in Brenda's face so marked as that power, except, in this moment of undisguise, while she thought herself unwatched, its singular happiness, a ...

— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... question of happiness. I don't feel as if I could ever be happy again; and so I don't see how I can make you ...

— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... conventionality. You cannot know what it would mean to me if you were to say, 'He is a married man, and we had better not meet so frequently in future.' To you, that would be no loss whatever. To me, it would be the loss of happiness, of consolation, of intellectual life. Listen and have pity upon me! I could not say it to your face, but I will say it now, though you may think it an unpardonable crime. You have become so necessary to me ...

— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... happier than I am in being single." It is true, I imagined that time would never arrive - and I have pertinaciously adhered to trying no experiment upon any other hope - for, many and mixed as are the ingredients which form what is generally considered as happiness, I was always fully convinced [hat social sympathy of character and taste could alone have any chance with me; all else I always thought, and now know, to be immaterial. I have only this peculiar,—that what many contentedly assert or adopt in theory, ...

— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

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