happiness

happiness,[/p] felicity, beatitude, blessedness, bliss all denote the enjoyment or pleasurable satisfaction that goes with well-being.

Happiness is the generic term applicable to almost any state of enjoyment or pleasurable satisfaction especially as based on one's well-being, security, effective accomplishments, or satisfied wishes.

felicity, denoting intense happiness is suited chiefly to formal expressions (as of congratulation) or dignified description. Beatitude is supreme felicity

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to understand by honorable love romance and beauty and happiness in the possession of beautiful, refined, delicate, affectionate women— Shaw

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I know no one more entitled by unpretending merit, or better prepared by habitual suffering, to receive and enjoy felicity— Austen

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we may fancy in the happy mother's breast a feeling somewhat akin to that angelic felicity, that joy which angels feel in heaven for a sinner repentant— Thackera

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about him all the Sanctities of Heaven stood thick as stars, and from his sight received beatitude past utterance— Milton

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a sense of deep beatitude—a strange sweet foretaste of Nirvana— Beerbohm

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Blessedness implies a feeling of being highly favored, especially by the Supreme Being, and often, a deep joy arising from the purest domestic, benevolent, or religious affections; bliss adds to blessedness a suggestion of exalted or ecstatic felicity; both blessedness and bliss, like beatitude, often refer to the joys of heaven

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thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, whose loves in higher love endure; what souls possess themselves so pure, or is there blessedness like theirs?— Tennyson

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bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very Heaven!— Wordsworth

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Analogous words: contentedness or content, satisfiedness or satisfaction (see participial adjectives at SATISFY): *pleasure, enjoyment, delight, delectation, joy, fruition

Antonyms: unhappiness

Contrasted words: despondency, despair, desperation, hopelessness, forlornness (see under DESPONDENT): *distress, misery