The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.

The saying contrasts inner temperament with external conditions, arguing that emotional well-being is shaped chiefly by one’s habitual outlook—patience, gratitude, resilience—rather than by fortune’s changes. It belongs to a long moral-philosophical tradition (Stoic and Christian) that treats happiness as a matter of character and self-governance. Read this way, the line functions as counsel: cultivate a steady disposition to reduce the power of circumstance to wound or elate you. Even if attributed to Martha Washington, the sentiment’s significance lies less in a specific event than in its general claim that agency over one’s attitudes is a primary lever for happiness.