To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill,--at the end of life just ready to be born,--affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson