He alone is the happy man who has learned to extract happiness, not from
ideal conditions, but from the actual ones about him. The man who has
mastered the secret will not wait for ideal surroundings; he will not
wait until next year, next decade, until he gets rich, until he can
travel abroad, until he can afford to surround himself with works of the
great masters; but he will make the most out of life to-day, where he
is.

"Why thus longing, thus forever sighing,
For the far-off, unattained and dim,
While the beautiful, all round thee lying,
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?

"Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within himself, can say:
'To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day!'"

Paradise is here or nowhere: you must take your joy with you or you will
never find it.

It is after business hours, not in them, that men break down. Men must,
like Philip Armour, turn the key on business when they leave it, and at
once unlock the doors of some wholesome recreation. Dr. Lyman Beecher
used to divert himself with a violin. He had a regular system of what he
called "unwinding," thus relieving the great strain put upon him.

"A man," says Dr. Johnson, "should spend part of his time with the
laughers."