Seek happiness for its own sake, and you will not find it seek for duty, and happiness will follow as the shadow comes with the sunshine.

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) was an American Congregational minister and moralist best known for compiling and popularizing aphorisms in the 19th century. The sentiment in this saying reflects a common Victorian-era Protestant ethic: happiness is not a reliable direct aim, but a byproduct of right living, self-discipline, and conscientious duty. Edwards’s maxims circulated widely in sermon literature and quotation collections, where they were used to reinforce character formation and the idea that moral purpose should govern desire. The imagery of “shadow” and “sunshine” fits the period’s homiletic style, presenting happiness as an inevitable accompaniment to virtue rather than an object to be chased.

The aphorism argues that happiness is indirect: when pursued as an end in itself it becomes elusive, because the pursuit tends to fixate on personal gratification and fluctuating feelings. By contrast, “duty” names a stable orientation—ethical obligation, service, and principled action. When one’s life is organized around such commitments, contentment “follows” naturally, like a shadow cast by sunlight: not something grasped, but something produced by the right conditions. The metaphor also implies proportionality and inevitability—where there is sustained “sunshine” (moral clarity and purposeful living), a “shadow” (happiness) appears without being summoned.