A Literary Prescription for

Happiness

For the oldest pursuit there is, and the quiet discovery that it was mostly a practice all along.

Happiness is the thing we all want and most misunderstand. We tend to imagine it as a destination, something waiting once the right pieces fall into place. But almost everyone who has studied it, and almost every wise book written about it, says something quieter: that happiness is far more a habit than an arrival, built from small things, gratitude, connection, attention, savoured on the way. These books and poems are for practising it, and for the plain, restorative pleasure of a glad page.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

Some of these gather what actually makes us happier, in study after study, and some are simply joyful stories that lift the spirits by the last page. Non-fiction and fiction together, they share one encouraging idea: that happiness is less a matter of luck than of practice, and that it is more within reach than we tend to believe.

The Happiness Project

Gretchen Rubin · 2009

Rubin spent a year testing everything the wisdom traditions and the research say about happiness, one month and one resolution at a time, and reported back with warmth and honesty. It is practical, funny and endlessly borrow-from-able. For anyone who wants to be happier but does not know where to begin, it is the perfect, unintimidating first step.

The How of Happiness

Sonja Lyubomirsky · 2007

A leading happiness researcher distils decades of science into clear, doable practices, and makes the liberating case that a large share of our happiness is genuinely within our control. Evidence-based without being dry, it is the book to read when you want to know what actually works. Grounded, hopeful and quietly empowering.

The Book of Joy

Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu · 2016

Two of the world’s most joyful spiritual leaders, and old friends, spend a week together talking about how to find lasting joy in a difficult world. Warm, funny and profound, it distils a lifetime of wisdom into something deeply comforting. For happiness that survives hard times, there is no better guide than these two laughing elders.

Hector and the Search for Happiness

François Lelord · 2002

A young psychiatrist, puzzled that his comfortable life has not made him happy, sets off around the world to find out what does. Lelord’s charming fable gathers his hero’s lessons into a simple, wise little list. Light, warm and quietly profound, it is a lovely reminder of how much happiness we overlook in plain sight.

Pollyanna

Eleanor H. Porter · 1913

The original optimist, young Pollyanna plays the ‘glad game’, finding something to be happy about in even the bleakest circumstance, and quietly transforms a whole town. Far less saccharine than its reputation, it is a genuinely moving argument for chosen gladness. A heart-warming classic for anyone who needs their faith in happiness restored.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Winifred Watson · 1938

A down-on-her-luck governess stumbles into one glorious, transforming day of glamour, friendship and unexpected joy. Watson’s sparkling comedy is pure delight from start to finish, and a wonderful reminder that happiness can arrive without warning and change everything. The literary equivalent of a glass of champagne.

Poems about happiness

For the glad heart

from “In the Bazaars of Hyderabad”

Sarojini Naidu, 1912

What do you sell, O ye merchants?
Richly your wares are displayed.
Turbans of crimson and silver,
Tunics of purple brocade,
Mirrors with panels of amber,
Daggers with handles of jade.

Naidu, the great Indian poet and freedom fighter, fills this poem with pure sensory delight: colour, sound and life spilling from every stall. It is happiness as sheer appetite for the world, a reminder that joy often lives in vivid, ordinary abundance. A gorgeous, gladdening poem from a voice too rarely heard.

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“Happy Thought”

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885

The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Two lines, and one of the most quietly joyful thoughts ever written. Stevenson catches the simple, childlike happiness of noticing just how much there is to delight in. It is the whole philosophy of gratitude in a single couplet, worth pinning up somewhere you will see it on a grey morning.

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from “Your World”

Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1922

Your world is as big as you make it.
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner,
My wings pressing close to my side.
…Then I soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!

Johnson, a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance, writes happiness as expansion: the joy of breaking out of a cramped, fearful life into rapture, power and ease. It is a poem about how much of our gladness we hem in ourselves, and how gloriously it can open. Uplifting, and from a wonderful poet worth discovering.

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Quotes & Prose

Quotes about happiness to keep

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Dalai Lama

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The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

E. E. Cummings

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Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of travelling.

Margaret Lee Runbeck

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If you want to be happy, be.

Leo Tolstoy

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Happiness is not a place you arrive at, but the habit of noticing you are already there.

Georgia Clare

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From Georgia

Practising gladness

A bright, gentle practice for starting the day with a lighter heart, and an essay on the small daily habit that quietly lifts a whole life.

A Sunrise Serenity Meditation

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A warm, uplifting practice for greeting the day with calm and gladness, and setting a gentler, brighter tone for the hours ahead.

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How a Gratitude Journal Changed My Life

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

On the simple, steadying practice of writing down what is good, and how noticing the small things slowly makes for a happier life.

Read the Essay →

Why One Small Thing Can Change Your Day

A short talk by Georgia Clare

A short, uplifting talk on how a single small shift, chosen on purpose, can quietly turn a whole day around.

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The 21-Day Meditation Course

Guided Meditation Course · Georgia Clare

Three weeks of short, guided meditations to help you build a calm, steady daily practice, one day at a time.

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Questions people ask

Reading for Happiness

Where should I start?

Start with The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, a warm, practical year-long experiment in becoming happier that is easy to borrow from. And if you would rather a story, Hector and the Search for Happiness is a charming fable about a man who travels the world asking what happiness actually is. The poems below are small doses of it in themselves.

What can I read to feel happier?

Both the science and the stories. The How of Happiness and The Book of Joy gather what actually lifts our mood, gratitude, connection, meaning, while novels like Pollyanna and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day are pure, restorative delight. Or begin with the poems and the lines to keep further down the page. Happiness, it turns out, is far more a practice than a stroke of luck.

Which quotes about happiness are worth keeping?

Quotes worth keeping include “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” (Abraham Lincoln), “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” (Dalai Lama) and “The most simple things can bring the most happiness.” (Izabella Scorupco). You will find these and more in the quotes section above.

Can reading really make me happier?

It genuinely can, in more than one way. The research-based books hand you real, doable habits that lift wellbeing over time. And a joyful novel or a bright poem does something more immediate: it lightens the mood in the moment and reminds you what gladness feels like. Happiness is a skill as much as a mood, and these are wonderful places to practise it.

Happiness

Prescribed reading

For the glad heart

Quotes about happiness to keep

Practising gladness

Reading for Happiness

Where should I start?

What can I read to feel happier?

Which quotes about happiness are worth keeping?

Can reading really make me happier?

More prescriptions await.