Happiness Quotes
We have collected and put the best Happiness Quotes. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.
May these Happiness Quotes on many subjects inspire you to never give up and keep working towards your goals. Who knows—success could be just around the corner.
The primary meaning of Happiness in all the leading European languages seems to involve the notion of good fortune, good chance, good happening; but from a very early date in the history of Greek philosophy the conception became the centre of keen speculation and dispute.
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Happiness is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history.
Happiness Quotes
When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. – Helen Keller
Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities. – Aristotle
Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul. – Democritus
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts; therefore guard accordingly. – Marcus Aurelius
People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest. – George Matthew Allen
In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet. – Albert Schweitzer
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. – Aldous Huxley
There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you. – David Burns
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling. –
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life. – Euripides
Happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature; it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool. – John M. Good
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. – Margaret Lee Runbeck
A light heart lives long. – William Shakespeare
Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. – Charles Caleb Colton
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own. –
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Tibetan Buddhist monk
The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles. – Arnold Bennett
Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind. – Alice Meynell
Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress. – Epictetus
Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances. – Benjamin Franklin
There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying things which are beyond the power of our will. – Epictetus
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them. – John Stuart Mills
You’re happiest while you’re making the greatest contribution. – Robert F. Kennedy
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. – Benjamin Disraeli
Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life. – William Ellery Channing
There is more to life than increasing its speed. – Mahatma Ghandi
The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken. – Henry W. Longfellow
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens. – Douglas Jerrold
Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it. – J. Petit Senn
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. – Albert Camus
Happiness Quotes
Happiness depends upon ourselves. – Aristotle
Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come,—as though that time should be of another make from this which has already come and is ours. – Thomas Fuller
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. – George Santayana
No man is happy who does not think himself so. – Publilius Syrus
Our minds are as different as our faces: we are all traveling to one destination; –happiness; but few are going by the same road. – Charles Caleb Colton
Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today. – James Dean
Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness. – Frank Tyger
Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want. – Alan Cohen
Life is a journey, and if you fall in love with the journey, you will be in love forever. – Peter Hagerty
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started. – David Allen
We forge the chains we wear in life. – Charles Dickens
If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu
Everything is a gift of the universe–even joy, anger, jealously, frustration, or separateness. Everything is perfect either for our growth or our enjoyment. – Ken Keyes Jr.
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts. – Richard Bach
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes. – Andrew Carnegie
Tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are. – Chinese Proverb
For me it is sufficient to have a corner by my hearth, a book, and a friend, and a nap undisturbed by creditors or grief. – Fernandez de Andrada
You cannot judge what should bring others joy, and others cannot judge what should bring you joy. – Alan Cohen
The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than growing with them. – Bernard M. Baruch
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. – Alain De Botton
If you start to think the problem is ‘out there,’ stop yourself. That thought is the problem. – Stephen Covey
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. – Denis Waitley
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. – Margaret Lee Runbeck
Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life. – Germaine Greer
Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it. – Greg Anderson
Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. – Buddha
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, then there will be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. – Anne Frank
In our lives, change is unavoidable, loss is unavoidable. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change, lies our happiness and freedom. – Buddha
Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. – Mary Anne Roadacher-Hershey
You never regret being kind. – Nicole Shepherd
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Ben Franklin
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. – Paul Boese
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. – Buddha
True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. – Helen Keller
Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it’s greedy or loving. – Dan Millman
The need for forgiveness is an illusion. There is nothing to forgive. – Rachel England
Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting. – Bernard Meltzer
Reflect upon you present blessings, of which every man has many–not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. – Charles Dickens
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. – Carl Jung
He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe. – Marcus Aurelius
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. – Dalai Lama
Happiness is not having what you want. It is appreciating what you have. – Unknown
True happiness…arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self. – Joseph Addison
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. – Ayn Rand
Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be. – William Adams
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. – Dale Carnegie
We can have peace if we let go of wanting to change the past and wanting to control the future. – Lester Levinson
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill
Money doesn’t bring happiness and creativity. Your creativity and happiness brings money. – Sam Rosen
Happiness is the experience of loving life. Being happy is being in love with that momentary experience. And love is looking at someone or even something and seeing the absolute best in him/her or it. Love is happiness with what you see. So love and happiness really are the same thing…just expressed differently. – Robert McPhillips
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. – Carl Jung
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. – Reinhold Niebuhr
I am not bound to win, I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have. – Abraham Lincoln
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. – Melody Beattie
There is no stress in the world, only people thinking stressful thoughts and then acting on them. – Dr. Wayne Dyer
We all get report cards in many different ways, but the real excitement of what you’re doing is in the doing of it. It’s not what you’re gonna get in the end–it’s not the final curtain–it’s really in the doing it, and loving what you’re doing. – Ralph Lauren
In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you. – Deepak Chopra
Success at the highest level comes down to one question: Can you decide that your happiness can come from someone else’s success? – Bill Walton
There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience. – Archibald McLeish
Once you do something you love, you never have to work again. – Willie Hill
Anything in life that we don’t accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it. – Shakti Gawain
The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. – Margaret Chase Smith
Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else. – Nathaniel Branden
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. – Soren Kierkegaard
Do what you have always done and you’ll get what you have always got. – Sue Knight
The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
We avoid the things that we’re afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover. – Shakti Gawain
Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them. – Marcus Aurelius
Happiness is where we find it, but very rarely where we seek it. – J. Petit Senn
To be content means that you realize you contain what you seek. – Alan Cohen
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. – John Milton
In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy. – Albert Clarke
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory. – Betty Smith
You are responsible for your life. You can’t keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on. – Oprah Winfrey
Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. – Shari R. Barr
View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn’t? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn’t? – Victor Frankl
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs–even though checkered by failure–than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time…serenity, that nothing is. – Thomas Szasz
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open. –
Be happy. It’s one way of being wise. –
Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy. –
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. –
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. –
People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat – that’s the only moral they know. –
We can’t control the world. We can only (barely) control our own reactions to it. Happiness is largely a choice, not a right or entitlement. –
I think the key to life is just being a happy person, and happiness will bring you success. –
Happiness is being content with what you have, living in freedom and liberty, having a good family life and good friends. –
Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be. –
Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want. –
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. –
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. –
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. –
I have only two kinds of days: happy and hysterically happy. –
People should find happiness in the little things, like family. –
As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves. –
Whoever is happy will make others happy. –
Happiness depends upon ourselves. –
Happy girls are the prettiest. –
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness. –
Family, friends, a good laugh and beautiful weather are the best cures. –
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. –
Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom. –
On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do. – Eckhart Tolle
The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life. – Brian Tracy
Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. – Marcel Proust
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. – George Bernard Shaw
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy. – Leo Buscaglia
A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life. – William Arthur Ward
Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you. – Mary Lou Retton
I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. – Dalai Lama
Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. – Joseph Campbell
Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation. – Leo Tolstoy
Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. – Abraham Lincoln
Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections. – Unknown
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight. – Kahlil Gibran
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine. – Morris West
Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy. – Milton Erickson
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain
A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. –
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. –
To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. –
There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human—in not having to be just happy or just sad—in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time. –
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. –
The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage. –
Happiness is a way station between too little and too much. –
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. –
There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. –
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else. –
Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness. –
The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. –
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens. –
Happiness is always the serendipitous result of looking for something else. –
Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. –
Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored. –
If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. –
Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. –
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. –
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. –
My family didn’t have a lot of money, and I’m grateful for that. Money is the longest route to happiness. –
Happiness is a place between too much and too little. –
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. –
We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. –
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. –
No medicine cures what happiness cannot. –
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not. –
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. –
There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved. –
How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and there will never be a time when it is not now. –
Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy. –
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. –
Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world. Don’t go through life creaking. –
Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other. When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack. –
You can only have bliss if you don’t chase it. –
Happiness is a form of courage. –
All happiness depends on courage and work. –
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit. –
So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? –
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. –
Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. –
Happiness is distraction from the human tragedy. –
Real happiness is not of temporary enjoyment, but is so interwoven with the future that it blesses for ever. –
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet. –
I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve. –
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own. –
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. –
Happiness is only real when shared. –
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. –
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. –
The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable. –
It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. –
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. –
You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes. –
If you want to be happy, be. –
In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness – otherwise how would you know when you’re happy? –
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. –
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. –
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. –
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts. –
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. –
Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress – the solutions to today’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems, and so on. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. –
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination. –
In my life I’ve learned that true happiness comes from giving. Helping others along the way makes you evaluate who you are. I think that love is what we’re all searching for. I haven’t come across anyone who didn’t become a better person through love. –
Happiness is a well-balanced combination of love, labour, and luck. –
Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. –
Ups and downs. Victories and defeats. Sadness and happiness. That’s the best kind of life. –
Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness. –
Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. –
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. –
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. –
Happiness is the default state. It’s what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing in life. –
Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad. –
Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other. –
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. –
Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world. –
Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration. –
Happiness is the natural flower of duty. –
It’s the moments that I stopped just to be, rather than do, that have given me true happiness. –
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. –
Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy. –
To be happy, you must fancy that everything you have is a gift, and you the chosen, though you worked your tail off for every bit of it. –
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. –
Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve. –
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. –
Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy. –
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. –
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. – Buddha
Happiness is the art of never holding in your mind the memory of any unpleasant thing that has passed. – Unknown
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. – Albert Camus
If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.’
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else. – Chinese Proverb
The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. – Ashley Montagu
Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different. – Stacey Charter
It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about. – Dale Carnegie
It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy. – Lucille Ball
Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest. –
Sometimes life knocks you on your ass… get up, get up, get up!!! Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them. –
Happiness is a direction, not a place. –
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be. –
There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way. –
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind. –
We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. –
The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you. –
The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony. –
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. –
If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. –
We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier. –
Happiness is a function of accepting what is. –
Happiness is an inside job. –
Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it. –
The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. –
On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so. –
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. –
Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering. –
Winnie the Pooh
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. – Epictetus
We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. – Frederick Keonig
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. – Thich Nhat Hanh
Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy. – Eskimo Proverb
To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness. – Mary Stuart
There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality. – Seneca
Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results. – Dennis Waitley
The only joy in the world is to begin. – Cesare Pavese
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. – Oscar Wilde
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. – Marthe Troly-Curtin
Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon”Winnie the Pooh
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. – Herman Cain
What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. – Confucius
There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them. – Anthony de Mello
Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions. – Dalai Lama
It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it. – Seneca
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be. – Marcel Pagnol
If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world. – Joseph Addison
Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
The pleasure which we most rarely experience gives us greatest delight. – Epictetus
It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. – L.M. Montgomery
Happiness is acceptance. – Unknown
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does. – James M. Barrie
We begin from the recognition that all beings cherish happiness and do not want suffering. It then becomes both morally wrong and pragmatically unwise to pursue only one’s own happiness oblivious to the feelings and aspirations of all others who surround us as members of the same human family. The wiser course is to think of others when pursuing our own happiness. – Dalai Lama
Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy. – Dr. Robert Anthony
The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others. – Aesop
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them. – Seneca
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?” – Albert Einstein
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. – Bertrand Russell
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Happiness is a myth we seek,
If manifested surely irks;
Like river speeding to the plain,
On its arrival slows and murks.
For man is happy only in
His aspiration to the heights;
When he attains his goal, he cools
And longs for other distant flights. – Kahlil Gibran
Happiness is a state of activity. – Aristotle
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. – Douglas Adams
Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. – Confucius
The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom. – Arthur Schopenhauer
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other – it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. – Charles Caleb Colton
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change. – Friedrich Schiller
When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened. – Winston Churchill
I’d far rather be happy than right any day. – Douglas Adams
Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it. – Andy Rooney
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. – Benjamin Disraeli
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. – Albert Schweitzer
Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy. – Heraclitus
Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object. – Herman Hesse
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. – Martha Washington
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. – Aesop
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don’t even remember leaving open. – Rose Lane
The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. – Albert Ellis
I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it. – Groucho Marx
Just because it didn’t last forever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth your while. – Unknown
Your work is discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it. – Buddha
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest. – Henry David Thoreau
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. – Leo Tolstoy
It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires. – Epicurus
Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic. – John Henry Jowett
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt
And remember, no matter where you go, there you are. – Confucius
If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy. – Proverb
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. – Helen Keller
For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don’t enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are you’re not going to be very happy. If someone bases his/her happiness on major events like a great job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn’t going to be happy much of the time.
If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness. – Andy Rooney
Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness. – Buddha
The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. – Andre Maurois
The grass is always greener where you water it. – Unknown
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another. – Marquis de Condorcet
Happiness in this life and hereafter
Quotes From Wikiquote
- I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen: – O man! place not thy confidence in this present world!
- Abd al-Rahman III,[1] quoted by Gibbon in Decline and Fall, chap. LII[2]
- Happiness was simply something that occurred in a well-regulated life.
- Brian Aldiss, Steppenpferd, in David G. Hartwell (ed.) Year’s Best SF 6, p. 310 (Originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, February 2000)
- Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
- Aristotle in Politics.
- They say you can’t really remember pain, remembering only the fact of it, not the precise way it feel. Maybe the same thing’s true of happiness.
- William Barton, Down in the Dark (originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 1998; reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, volume 16, edited by Gardner Dozois).
- I shall take the heart… for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.
- L. Frank Baum, lines for the Tinman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).
- In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child.
- L. Frank Baum, in lines for Santa Claus in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902).
- Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. [3]
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), screenplay by Steve Kloves
- To have been happy, madame, adds to calamity.
- Beaumont and Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn (licensed 22 January 1626; 1647), Act I, scene 1, line 250.
- HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).
- Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-da
If you’re not greedy, you will go far
You will live in happiness too
Like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do.- Oompa Loompas, Oompa Loompa (Veruca) Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (film)
- Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.
- John Buchan, A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Chapter I.
- The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,—that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances.
- Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times (1829)
- Happiness lies in the fulfilment of the spirit through the body.
- Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (1945), Part I.
- Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that hast survived the Fall!- William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book III, line 41.
- Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.- William Cowper in Table Talk (1817) line 246.
- It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time — and they feel that you are trying — to make them happy. And you rarely can make another happy, unless you are happy yourself.
- Dinah Craik, A Woman’s Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10.
- Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another?
- Dinah Craik, A Woman’s Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10.
- I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not.
- Dinah Craik, A Woman’s Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10.
- Happiness is not an end — it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.
- Dinah Craik, A Woman’s Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10.
- The only way to make people good, is to make them happy.
- Dinah Craik, A Woman’s Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 11.
- Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I’m not worried about my soul.
- Clarence Darrow in a debate with religious leaders in Kansas City, as quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)
- The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children.
- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), volume I, chapter III: “Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued”, p. 39.
- Happy is the man that has not walked in the counsel of the wicked ones, And in the way of sinners has not stood, And in the seat of ridiculers has not sat. But his delight is in the law of Jehovah, And in his law he reads in an undertone day and night. And he will certainly become like a tree planted by streams of water, That gives its own fruit in its season And the foliage of which does not wither, And everything he does will succeed. The wicked are not like that, But are like the chaff that the wind drives away.
- David, Psalms 1: 1-4
- I, for one, live only by and for happiness.
- David Vogel, Married Life
- I am every day more convinced that happiness in Heaven is for those who know how to be happy on earth.
- Josemaría Escrivá (The Forge, no. 1005 [1])
- Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.
- Epicurus, Number 28 of the 40 “Sovran Maxims” (or “Sovereign Maxims), or “Principal Doctrines” as translated by Robert Drew Hicks
- Happiness in the ordinary sense is not what one needs in life, though one is right to aim at it. The true satisfaction is to come through and see those whom one loves come through.
- E. M. Forster, Selected Letters: Letter 216, to Florence Barger, 11 February 1922.
- Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
- Mahatma Gandhi, as quoted in Humor, Play, & Laughter : Stress-proofing Life with Your Kids (1998) by Joseph A. Michelli, p. 88.
- Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.
- Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love.
- Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,
Our own felicity to make or find.- Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (1764), line 431.
- It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.
- Cary Grant, as quoted in “Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About” by Sheilah Graham Westbrook in Motion Picture (June 1964).
- Freud’s prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.
- Sydney J. Harris, Pieces of Eight (1982).
- Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne in The American Notebooks (1851).
- The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object, of his being.
- David Hume, “The Stoic”, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, part 1, essay 16, in The Philosophical Works of David Hume (1826), vol. 3, p. 167.
- Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
- Aldous Huxley, Essay “Distractions I” in Vedanta for the Western World (1945) edited by Christopher Isherwood
- The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.
- William Ralph Inge como citado in: The Reader’s Digest – Volume 123 – Página 79, Reader’s Digest Association, 1983
- Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Gods” (1876) as published in The Gods and Other Lectures (1879).
- Perfect happiness I believe was never intended by the deity to be the lot of any one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I as stedfastly believe.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Page (July 15, 1763); in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950), vol. 1, p. 10. Jefferson used the spelling “beleive”. This letter was written in hopes that John Page would talk to Belinda, a young woman with whom Jefferson, then 20, was infatuated. Jefferson was normally cool and level-headed, but Belinda had a devastating effect on his poise, leaving him tongue-tied and stammering. Saul K. Padover, Jefferson (1942), chapter 2, p. 20.
- We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson early draft for the Declaration of Independence (June 1776).
- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson’s final draft for the Declaration of Independence (July 1776).
- The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family…. public emploiment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one’s family and affairs.
- Thomas Jefferson, secretary of state, letter to Francis Willis, Jr. (April 18, 1790); in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1961), vol. 16, p. 353. Willis served in Congress 1791–1793.
- Believing that the happiness of mankind is best promoted by the useful pursuits of peace, that on these alone a stable prosperity can be founded, that the evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come, I have used my best endeavors to keep our country uncommitted in the troubles which afflict Europe, and which assail us on every side.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Young Republicans of Pittsburg (December 2, 1808), in H. A. Washington, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1871), vol. 8, p. 142.
- The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson Letter “to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland” (31 March 1809).
- Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need, since the Kingdom of the heavens belongs to them.
- “Happy are those who mourn, since they will be comforted.
- “Happy are the mild-tempered, since they will inherit the earth.
- “Happy are those hungering and thirsting for righteousness, since they will be filled.
- “Happy are the merciful, since they will be shown mercy.
- “Happy are the pure in heart, since they will see God.
- “Happy are the peacemakers, since they will be called sons of God.
- “Happy are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, since the Kingdom of the heavens belongs to them.
- “Happy are you when people reproach you and persecute you and lyingly say every sort of wicked thing against you for my sake. Rejoice and be overjoyed, since your reward is great in the heavens, for in that way they persecuted the prophets prior to you.
- Jesus, Matthew 5: 3-12, NWT
- Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788).
- Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.
- Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 6.
- How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. … All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
- Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 7.
- Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.
- Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), Ch. 10.
- Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller in Optimism (1903).
- A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
- Helen Keller The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933).
- The great happiness-secret, after all, is division. How dare we, in this vain, fleeting world, concentrate our whole freight of interest in one frail bark ?
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), Vol. III, chapter 9
- To use the established phrase, three months of uninterrupted happiness glided away—a phrase, though in frequent use, whose accuracy I greatly doubt ; there being no such thing as uninterrupted happiness any how or any where.
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath’s Book of Beauty, 1833 (1832), ‘The Talisman’
- And yet it is a wasted heart :
It is a wasted mind
That seeks not in the inner world
Its happiness to find ;
For happiness is like the bird
That broods above its nest,
And finds beneath its folded wings,
Life’s dearest, and its best.- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Ethel Churchill (or The Two Brides) (1837), Vol. III, Chapter 1
- We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart.
- Abraham Lincoln, last public address (April 11, 1865); in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 8, p. 399 (1953). On April 9, Lee had surrendered.
- To be strong
Is to be happy!- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus, The Golden Legend (1872), Part II, line 731.
- The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter XIII.
- Three ounces are necessary, first of Patience, Then, of Repose & Peace; of Conscience
A pound entire is needful;
of Pastimes of all sorts, too,
Should be gathered as much as the hand can hold;
Of Pleasant Memory & of Hope three good drachms
There must be at least. But they should moistened be
With a liquor made from True Pleasures which rejoice the heart. Then of Love’s Magic Drops, a few—
But use them sparingly, for they may bring a flame
Which naught but tears can drown,
Grind the whole and mix therewith of Merriment, an ounce
To even. Yet all this may not bring happiness
Except in your Orisons you lift your voice
To Him who holds the gift of health.- Margaret of Navarre, in Marie West King, ed., Recipe for a Happy Life, Written by Margaret of Navarre in the Year Fifteen Hundred, p. 1 (1911). A modern “happy home recipe”, author unknown, includes: “4 cups of love, 2 cups of loyalty, 3 cups of forgiveness, 1 cup of friendship, 5 spoons of hope, 2 spoons of tenderness, 4 quarts of faith, 1 barrel of laughter. Take love and loyalty, mix thoroughly with faith. Blend it with tenderness, kindness and understanding. Add friendship and hope, sprinkle abundantly with laughter. Bake it with sunshine. Serve daily with generous helpings”.
- Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.
- José Martí, My Race (1893), “Mi Raza”, first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online.
- Tolerant people are the happiest, so why not get rid of prejudices that hold you back?
- William Moulton Marston 1939 Your Life What are your prejudices?
- In every life we have some trouble, but when you worry? You make it double. Don’t worry, be happy.
- Bobby McFerrin, Simple Pleasures, (album) Don’t Worry, Be Happy 2008, (single)
- Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H.L. Mencken, “Iran’s vice squad”. Scripps Howard News Service. November 12, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-11-13.
- Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only the unhappy are churlish in deportment.
- Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins (1922).
- What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888), sec. 2.
- I could tell you a long story (and you know it as well as I do) about what is to be gained by beating the enemy back. What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she realty is, and should fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard. If they ever failed in an enterprise, they made up their minds that at any rate the city should not find their courage lacking to her, and they gave to her the best contribution that they could. They gave her their lives, to her and to all of us, and for their own selves they won praises that never grow old, the most splendid of sepulchers — not the sepulchre in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men’s minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action. For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark them out; no, in foreign lands also, not in any visible form but in people’s hearts, their memory abides and grows. It is for you to try to be like them. Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
- Pericles, Quotes of Pericles, as recorded by Thucydides, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2, chapter 44: Funeral oration, as translated at “In Defense of Democracy”
- Verse 4 is sometimes freely translated as The secret to happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is courage.
- Pericles, Quotes of Pericles, as recorded by Thucydides, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2, chapter 44: Funeral oration, as translated at “In Defense of Democracy”
- Happiness is only real when shared.
- Into the Wild, 2007 screenplay by Sean Penn based on the 1996 book by Jon Krakauer about Christopher McCandless.
- If they (children) smash, the flower vase assumes a smile
while turning into pieces.
For a chance to be spilled by their hands,
anything they hold gets spilled itself full of happiness.
For a chance to play with them,
water forgets about its own colourlessness.- Suman Pokhrel, Children
- Oh happiness! our being’s end and aim!
Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate’er thy name;
That something still which prompts th’ eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die.- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 1.
- Fix’d to no spot is Happiness sincere;
‘Tis nowhere to be found, or ev’rywhere;
‘Tis never to be bought, but always free.- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 15.
- Heaven to mankind impartial we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness;
But mutual wants this happiness increase,
All nature’s difference keeps all nature’s peace.- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 53.
- Perfect the Will, the Mind, Feeling, their corporeal organs and their material tools; be useful to yourselves, to your own ones, and to others; and Happiness, insofar as it exists on this earth, will come of itself.”
- Bolesław Prus, The Most General Life Ideals, 2nd, revised edition, Warsaw, 1905. (Newspaper serialization, 1897–99; 1st book edition, 1901).
- The nicest thing about being happy is that you think you’ll never be unhappy again.
- Luis Molina in Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976).
- There are only two roads that lead to something like human happiness. They are marked by the words: love and achievement…. In order to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy…. The secret of human happiness is not in self-seeking but in self-forgetting.
- Theodor Reik, A Psychologist Looks at Love (1957), chapter 3, final page, in Of Love and Lust, p. 194.
- The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously.
- Tom Robbins, in “The Green Man : Tom Robbins” interviewed by Gregory Daurer, in High Times (12 June 2002).
- To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch. 2: Byronic Unhappiness.
- The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.
- Bertrand Russell, in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood, quoted in Alan Wood’s Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7.
- Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
- George Santayana in The Life of Reason (1905).
- The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
- William Saroyan, My Heart’s in the Highlands (1939).
- But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act V, scene 2, line 47.
- Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is, either in heaven or in hell.
- William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act II, scene 3, line 6.
- How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue!- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Canto V.
- Happiness does not depend on the size or content of a goal, but on the strength of the desire to have it.
- Simon Soloveychik, Parenting for Everyone (1989).
- Happiness is possible only in a relationship with a partner. Imagine that some fellow who has lived his life as a singer goes to an uninhabited island and sings as loudly as possible. If there is no one there to hear him, he will not be happy. To realize that we exist for the sake of others is the great achievement that changes our lives. When we realize that our life is not ours alone but is meant to be for the sake of the other, we begin to follow a path different from the one we were on. Just as singing to yourself will not make you happy, there is no joy without a partner. Even the smallest and most trivial thing can bring you happiness when you do it for another.
- Sun Myung Moon, 2009, As a Peace-loving Global Citizen, Page 139.
- Let us meditate on the love of God, who being supremely happy Himself, communicateth perfect happiness to us. Supreme happiness doth not make God forget us; shall the miserable comforts of this life make us forget Him?
- James Saurin reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 270.
- Virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honor, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
- Be it even over our bleaching bones the truth will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth! Because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.
- Leon Trotsky, ‘I Stake My Life’, opening telephone address to the N.Y. Hippodrome Meeting for the opening event of the Dewey Commission on the Moscow Trial (February 9, 1937)
- O terque quaterque beati.
- O thrice, four times happy they!
- Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), I. 94.
- Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do- Pharrell Williams, Happy (21 November 2013) from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack album
- One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.
- William Carlos Williams, letter to his mother, written from the University of Pennsylvania (12 February 1904), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 5
- All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.
- Attributed to Alexander Woollcott in various sources. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). Sometimes heard, “immoral, illegal, fattening, or too expensive”.
- True happiness ne’er entered at an eye;
True happiness resides in things unseen.- Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 1,021.
- Happiness is a good flow of life.
- Zeno of Citium, as quoted by Stobaeus, ii. 77.
- Hold him alone truly fortunate who has ended his life in happy well-being.
- Æschylus, Agamemnon, 928.
- ‘Twas a jolly old pedagogue, long ago,
Tall and slender, and sallow and dry;
His form was bent, and his gait was slow,
His long thin hair was white as snow,
But a wonderful twinkle shone in his eye.
And he sang every night as he went to bed,
“Let us be happy down here below;
The living should live, though the dead be dead,”
Said the jolly old pedagogue long ago.- George Arnold, The Jolly Old Pedagogue.
- Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
- Hosea Ballou, Manuscript, Sermons.
- La massima felicita divisa nel maggior numero.
- The greatest happiness of the greatest number.
- Cesare Beccaria, Trattato dei Delitti e delle Pene (Treatise of Crimes and of Punishment), Introduction (1764).
- Priestly was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth—that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
- Jeremy Bentham, Volume X, p. 142.
- Quid enim est melius quam memoria recte factorum, et libertate contentum negligere humana?
- What can be happier than for a man, conscious of virtuous acts, and content with liberty, to despise all human affairs?
- Brutus, to Cicero. Cicero’s Letters, I, 16, 9.
- Oh, Mirth and Innocence! Oh, Milk and Water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!- Lord Byron, Beppo (1818), Stanza 80.
- * * * all who joy would win
Must share it,—Happiness was born a twin.- Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 172.
- There comes
For ever something between us and what
We deem our happiness.- Lord Byron, Sardanapalus, Act I, scene 2.
- Quid datur a divis felici optatius hora?
- What is there given by the gods more desirable than a happy hour?
- Catullus, Carmina, LXII. 30.
- The message from the hedge-leaves,
Heed it, whoso thou art;
Under lowly eaves
Lives the happy heart.- John Vance Cheney, The Hedge-bird’s Message.
- In animi securitate vitam beatam ponimus.
- We think a happy life consists in tranquillity of mind.
- Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I. 20.
- Le bonheur semble fait pour être partagé.
- Happiness seems made to be shared.
- Pierre Corneille, Notes par Rochefoucauld.
- If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies,
And they are fools who roam;
The world has nothing to bestow,
From our own selves our bliss must flow,
And that dear hut,—our home.- Nathaniel Cotton, The Fireside.
- Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t’were his own.- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Distichs.
- Das beste Glück, des Lebens schönste Kraft
Ermattet endlich.- The highest happiness, the purest joys of life, wear out at last.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia auf Tauris, IV. 5. 9.
- Now happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature: it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool.
- John Mason Good, The Book of Nature, Series III, Lecture VII.
- The loss of wealth is loss of dirt,
As sages in all times assert;
The happy man’s without a shirt.- John Heywood, Be Merry Friends.
- And there is ev’n a happiness
That makes the heart afraid.- Thomas Hood, Ode to Melancholy.
- Fuge magna, licet sub paupere tecto
Reges et regum vita procurrere amicos.- Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be more real happiness than kings or their favorites enjoy.
- Horace, Epistles, I. 10. 32.
- Non possidentem multa vocaveris
Recte beatum; rectius occupat
Nomen beati, qui Deorum
Muneribus sapienter uti,
Duramque callet pauperiem pati,
Pejusque leto flagitium timet.- You will not rightly call him a happy man who possesses much; he more rightly earns the name of happy who is skilled in wisely using the gifts of the gods, and in suffering hard poverty, and who fears disgrace as worse than death.
- Horace, Carmina, IX, Book 4. 9. 45.
- That Action is best which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery.
- Frances Hutcheson, Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). Treatise II, Section 3. An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil.
- Upon the road to Romany
It’s stay, friend, stay!
There’s lots o’ love and lots o’ time
To linger on the way;
Poppies for the twilight,
Roses for the noon,
It’s happy goes as lucky goes,
To Romany in June.- Wallace Irwin, From Romany to Rome.
- Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
- Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1766).
- Ducimus autem
Hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitæ,
Nec jactare jugum vita didicere magistra.- We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
- Juvenal, Satires, XII. 20.
- On n’est jamais si heureux, ni si malheureux, qu’on se l’imagine.
- We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be.
- François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes.
- A sound Mind in a sound Body, is a short but full description of a happy State in this World.
- John Locke, Thoughts Concerning Education.
- Happiness, to some elation;
Is to others, mere stagnation.- Amy Lowell, Happiness.
- Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it.- James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal, Prelude to Part I, line 61.
- Sive ad felices vadam post funera campos,
Seu ferar ardentem rapidi Phlegethontis ad undam,
Nec sine te felix ero, nec tecum miser unquam.- Heaven would not be Heaven were thy soul not with mine, nor would Hell be Hell were our souls together.
- Baptista Mantuanus, Eclogue, III. 108.
- Neminem, dum adhuc viveret, beatum dici debere arbitrabatur.
- He (Solon) considered that no one ought to be called happy as long as he was alive.
- Valerius Maximus, Book VII. 2. Ext. 2. Same in Sophocles—Œdipus Rex. End. Herodotus—Clio. 32. Solon to Cræsus. Repeated by Cræsus to Cyrus when on his funeral pyre, thus obtaining his pardon.
- And feel that I am happier than I know.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 282.
- No eye to watch and no tongue to wound us,
All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.- Thomas Moore, Come o’er the Sea.
- The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
The wise grows it under his feet.- James Oppenheim, The Wise.
- Dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.- Before he is dead and buried no one ought to be called happy.
- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book III. 136.
- Thus we never live, but we hope to live; and always disposing ourselves to be happy, it is inevitable that we never become so.
- Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, Chapter V, Section I.
- Said Scopas of Thessaly, “But we rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.”
- Plutarch, Morals, Volume II. Of the Love of Wealth.
- Le bonheur des méchants comme un torrent s’écoule.
- The happiness of the wicked flows away as a torrent.
- Jean Racine, Athalie, II. 7.
- Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (4 March 1933).
- Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it, and by no means in the way the future keeps its promises.
- George Sand, Handsome Lawrence, Chapter III.
- Des Menschen Wille, das ist sein Glück.
- The will of a man is his happiness.
- Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein’s Lager, VII. 25.
- O mother, mother, what is bliss?
O mother, what is bale?
Without my William what were heaven,
Or with him what were hell?- Walter Scott, translation of a ballad of Bürger’s.
- Non potest quisquam beate degere, qui se tantum intuetur, qui omnia ad utilitates suas convertit; alteri vivas oportet, si vis tibi vivere.
- No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.
- Seneca the Younger, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XLVIII.
- Ye seek for happiness—alas, the day!
Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold,
Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway
For which, O willing slaves to Custom old,
Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Revolt of Islam, Canto XI, Stanza 17.
- Magnificent spectacle of human happiness.
- Sydney Smith, America, Edinburgh Review, (July, 1824).
- Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.
- Sydney Smith, Lecture on Benevolent Affections.
- Be happy, but be happy through piety.
- Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807), Book XX, Chapter III.
- Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heavens above,
And the road below me.- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Vagabond.
- Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
-
- Thomas Tsasz “Emotions”, p. 36.
- For it stirs the blood in an old man’s heart;
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice,
And the light of a pleasant eye.- Nathaniel Parker Willis, Saturday Afternoon, Stanza 1.
- True happiness is to no spot confined.
If you preserve a firm and constant mind,
‘Tis here, ’tis everywhere.- John Huddlestone Wynne, History of Ireland.
- We’re charm’d with distant views of happiness,
But near approaches make the prospect less.- Thomas Yalden, Against Enjoyment, line 23.
- The sacrifices required in the Christian life are necessary to emancipate the soul, and raise it above its servile dependence on condition. They are losses of mere happiness, and for just that reason they are preparations of joy.
- Horace Bushnell, p. 297.
- Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element.
- Henry Giles, p. 297.
- It is a great truth, wonderful as it is undeniable, that all our happiness — temporal, spiritual, and eternal — consists in one thing; namely, in resigning ourselves to God, and in leaving ourselves with Him, to do with us and in us just as He pleases.
- Madame Guyon, p. 297.
- There is something better for us in the world than happiness. We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly and gratefully. We will add a thousand fold to the happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the future which it brings; but we will not place happiness first, and thus cloud our heads with doubts, and fill our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils ‘grow the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.
- Josiah Gilbert Holland, p. 296.
- When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself — nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.
- Wilhelm von Humboldt, p. 297.
- In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
- Horace Mann, p. 297.
- Happiness is neither within us nor without us, it is the union of ourselves with God.
- Blaise Pascal, p. 297.
- The soul’s calm sunshine.
- Alexander Pope, p. 298.
- Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.
- Jane Porter, p. 298.
- Brethren, happiness is not our being’s end and aim. The Christian’s aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.
- Frederick William Robertson, p. 296.
- So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.
- J. C. Ryle, p. 297.
- Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire.- Edward Young, p. 298.
- Happiness depends upon ourselves.
- Aristotle
- When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
- Marcus Aurelius