*
His was, indeed, a good influence in life while he was
still among us; he had a fresh laugh; it did you good to
see him; and, however sad he may have been at heart, he
always bore a bold and cheerful countenance and took
fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring.
*
Pleasures are more beneficial than duties because, like the
quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they are twice
blest. There must always be two in a kiss, and there may
be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an element of
sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, among
generous people, received with confusion.
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being
happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the
world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they
are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.
*
A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a
five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill;
and their entrance into a room is as though another candle
had been lighted. We need not care whether they could
prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing
than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem
of the Liveableness of Life.
*
Mme. Bazin came out after a while; she was tired with her
day's work, I suppose; and she nestled up to her husband
and laid her head upon his breast.
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