Happiness Quote by David Brainerd

Brainerd’s line isn’t gentle spiritual advice so much as a hard pivot away from the era’s default bargain: behave well, work hard, and the world will reward you with some stable portion of happiness. He’s writing as an 18th-century missionary with a short, sickly life and a daily acquaintance with disappointment. In that setting, “the world” isn’t just nightlife or vanity; it’s weather, disease, poverty, colonial violence, fragile institutions, and the whiplash of human loyalty. The sentence lands like a controlled burn meant to clear out false expectations before they become despair.

The craft is in the clean transfer of desire. Brainerd doesn’t scold you for wanting happiness; he reroutes the supply line. “Hope for it” is key: he’s targeting the psychology of anticipation, the way we outsource emotional stability to outcomes we can’t command. By insisting happiness be hoped for “from God,” he offers a different economy of security, one where joy is not a wage paid by circumstances but a gift that can outlast them. That’s not merely piety; it’s a strategy for surviving a world that refuses to keep promises.

There’s also a quiet indictment embedded in the repetition: “from” the world, “from” God. Same grammar, opposite reliability. The subtext is sober, even bracingly modern: if your happiness is contingent on the world’s cooperation, you will be perpetually managed by forces that don’t know your name.