Louise Bogan Quotes

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child.

Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.

In terms of effect on the world, it's very good that I've lived. And so I guess, if I could go back in time and prevent my birth, I wouldn't do it. But I sure wish I hadn't had so much pain.

Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

How wonderful life is while you're in the world

I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.

Joy, happiness ... we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections ... to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

The sheer splendor of the sight made my chest tighten and tears sting my eyes. All the darkness lately made it easy to forget the world contained more than people trying to hurt other people. It had beauty, too, if you knew where to look--and remembered to open your eyes.

There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.

No grief has a right to immortality. That ground belongs to joy, to hope, to faith.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars-and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.

Joy is a marvelous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness.

Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.

"Existence is sorrow." Understand, and go beyond sorrow. This is the way of brightness.

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.

one would suffer a great deal to be happy.

If there is no enjoyment in this world, there would not be so much suffering. As suffering really is the frustration of our attempts to enjoy.

The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings.

Venus smiles not in a house of tears.

I think joy is just as instructive as pain, and I like it better. I never meant to suffer any more than I could help; my nature was meant for happiness, a daylight art and living.