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Blue bird of happiness

Posted by ESC on October 06, 2008 at 13:18

In Reply to: Blue bird of happiness posted by ESC on October 06, 2008 at 13:13:

: : Does anyone know where the 'blue bird of happiness' comes from and what exactly it means?

: It is from Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same name, first produced in London in 1910. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable revised by John Ayto (HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 2005, Seventeenth Edition).Page 163.

Looking further, there is a long literary tradition regarding the blue bird. See Wikipedia -- en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Bluebird_of_happiness It says there that "The moral is that happiness comes more from the journey than the reward and that happiness is fleeting."

The elusive bird of happiness. (Now I'm really depressed.)

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