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Charlotte Brontë: Villette (2012, Penguin Books) 4 stars

Villette is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family …

"No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise. “Cultivate happiness!” I said briefly to the doctor: “do you cultivate happiness? How do you manage?”"

Villette by 

On the "cultivation" of happiness