“I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient;   cheerfulness, fixed and permanent.  Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth, who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholy; on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind
such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity. Cheerfulness bears the same friendly regard to the mind as to the body; it banishes
all anxious care and discontent; soothes and composes the passions and keeps them in a perpetual calm.”

-Joseph Addison