Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our
grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
Anonymous
"The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue
happiness you'll never find it." ~ CP Snow
"happiness is when you are looking out at your favorite landmark in the best
hotel you have ever been in listening to your favorite song and watching your
favorite movie eating chips and having not a care in the world"
To see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour."
William Blake
"Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means,
and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government."
Aristotle
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.
When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person,
you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces
surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night
you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.
Albert Camus:
"The most perfect society is that whose purpose
is the universal and supreme happiness."
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
"A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness;
happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of
one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will,
and is gladly accepted."
George Santayana
"If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having."
Henry Miller
"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."
Maxim Gorky
"Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts."
Chinese proverb
"Drugs bring us to the gates of paradise, then keep us from entering."
Mason Cooley
"The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular
cause for being happy except that they are so."
William Ralph Inge
"The happy man's without a shirt."
John Heywood
"Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is
happiness."
George Orwell
"The secret of happiness is to face the world is horrible, horrible,
horrible."
Bertrand Russell
"The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell
of Heaven."
John Milton
"It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make
ourselves happy"
Immanuel Kant
"He who lives happiest has forgotten most"
Rober Anton Wilson
"The happy think a lifetime short, but to the unhappy one night can be an
eternity."
Lucian
Ecclesiastes:
For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
"To describe happiness is to diminish it."
Henri B. Stendhal
"Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness
which this world affords."
Samuel Johnson
"The surest way to happiness is to lose yourself in a cause greater than
yourself. "
Unknown
"Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it
depends solely upon what you think."
Dale Carnegie
"Happiness is unrepentant pleasure."
Socrates
"Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel,
but very dry to talk about."
Jeremy Bentham
"The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness
shall depend as little as possible on external things."
Epictetus
"Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be
happy in ways which we approve."
Robert S. Lynd
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
Ernest Hemingway
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of
human existence."
Aristotle
"Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by
dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it."
Alexandre Dumas
"To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve
happiness."
Johann G. Fichte
"The happier the moment the shorter."
Pliny The Elder
"Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place
to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so."
Robert Green Ingersoll
"Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it."
Dostoevsky
"Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by
dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it."
Alexandre Dumas
"A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles
imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the
heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by
thought."
Bertrand Russell
"Happiness depends, as Nature shows, less on exterior things than most
suppose."
William Cowper
"Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy
they are, who already possess it."
Fran็ois Duc de La Rochefoucauld
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
Ernest Hemingway
"I am happy and content because I think I am."
Alain-Ren้ Lesage
"Happiness, though an indefinite concept, is the goal of all rational beings"
Immanuel Kant
"The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals
and legislation."
Jeremy Bentham
"Gaiety - a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder
in the machine."
Denis Diderot
"It appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of
all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought
otherwise."
Bertrand Russell
"Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy,
only lucky."
Solon
"To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright"
Walter Benjamin
"Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of
others."
Henry Fielding
"I have the happiness of a passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?"
George Gissing
"I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have
fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen."
Abd-El-Raham
"It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have
both failed."
Kin Hubbard
"Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
Voltaire
"Suspicion of happiness is in our blood."
E. V. Lucas
"Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go
out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak."
J. August Strindberg
"Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every
day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of
ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from a
Heaven, at our very door."
Tryon Edwards
"...happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice
of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it..."
Aristotle
"Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness
possible."
Marcel Proust
"I had rather have a fool make me merry, than experience make me sad."
William Shakespeare
"Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism,
selfishness, evil --or else an absolute ignorance."
Graham Greene
"Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty
can't."
Aldous Huxley
"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."
W. Beran Wolfe
"Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things."
La Rochefoucauld
"The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we
obtain from our surroundings. . . . The world in which a person lives shapes
itself chiefly by the way in which he or she looks at it."
Arthur Schopenhauer
"Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in
the soul."
Democritus
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired
their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could
have paradise in a few years."
Bertrand Russell
"There is no happiness; there are only moments of happiness."
[anon; Spanish Proverb]
"Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep."
William Maxwell
"Happiness ain't a thing in itself - it's only a contrast with something that
ain't pleasant."
Mark Twain
"The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your
control."
Ogden Nash
"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means
they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of
others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views.
This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang
themselves."
Blaise Pascal
"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."
Victor Hugo
"Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself."
Plutarch
"When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing
corpse."
Sophocles
"Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness
impossible."
St Augustine
"The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom."
Arthur Schopenhauer
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy;
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
Marcel Proust
"Tranquil pleasure constitutes human beings' supreme good"
Epicurus
"What is the worth of anything,
But for the happiness 'twill bring?"
Richard Owen Cambridge
"Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other
people's"
Bertrand Russell
"By heaven we understand a state of happiness infinite in degree, and endless
in duration."
Benjamin Franklin
"The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this
were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled,
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 thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man."
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Here we are the way politics ought to be in America; the politics of
happiness, the politics of purpose and the politics of joy.
Hubert H. Humphrey:
Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from
themselves.
James M. Barrie:
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his
feet.
James Oppenheim:
"Present joys are more to flesh and blood
Than a dull prospect of a distant good."
John Dryden
"To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to
feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but
part of the stream of life slowing on from the first germ to the remote and
unknown future."
Bertrand Russell
"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living
to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to
adults."
Thomas Szasz
"Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety.
It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment."
J. Donald Walters
"He is happy that knoweth not himself to be otherwise."
Thomas Fuller
"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise."
William Blake
"I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in
attempting to satisfy them."
John Stuart Mill
"Be happy. It's one way of being wise."
Colette
"Those who seek happiness miss it, and those who discuss it, lack it."
Holbrook Jackson
"It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make
ourselves happy"
Immanuel Kant
"The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and
quietly to revere what is unknowable."
Goethe
"Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are
commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."
Samuel Johnson
"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence
becomes a mad lamentable experiment."
George Santayana
"The more refined one is, the more unhappy."
Anton Chekhov
"No pleasure is evil in itself; but the means by which certain pleasures
are gained bring pains many times greater than the pleasures."
Epicurus
"Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of
great joys."
Christian Nestell Bovee
"How you feel right now is about equally genetic and circumstantial, but how
you will feel on average over the next ten years is fully 80 percent because of
your genes."
Dean Hamer
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
"Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."
~ the Duchess of Windsor (when asked what is the secret of a long and happy
life)
"All will be lost apart from happiness." ~Jacques Pr้vert (1900-1977)
"Anything you're good at contributes to happiness." ~Bertrand Russell
(attributed)
"If only the secret of happiness was as simple as getting wealthy and spending more." ~Patrick Dixon
"Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose." ~William Cowper (attributed)
"The fool is looking for happiness far away. The wise man makes it grow under his feet." ~James Oppenheim
"Happiness depends upon ourselves." ~Aristotle
"Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object." ~Hermann Hesse
"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product." -Eleanor Roosevelt
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." ~Ayn Rand (attributed)
"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment." ~George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905)
"Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know."
~Richard Bach (attributed)
"Happiness sneaks through a door you didn't know that you left open." ~ John
Barrymore
"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, Politics X 1323
"A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships." ~Helen Keller
"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
"Laughing because you don't know where you are: that is happiness."--Aeric
Maddox
"I don't know if he'll be happy, but it's certain he'll be happy about it." ~
Alon Mizrahi
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to
himself." ~Thomas Paine
"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not
attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."
~Helen Keller
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." ~Abraham
Lincoln
"Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness." ~Andr้ Gide
"The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible,
horrible, horrible." ~Bertrand Russell
"The secret to happiness is short-term, stupid self-interest!" ~Bill Watterson,
Calvin and Hobbes (comic strip)
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of
happiness." ~Bertrand Russell (attributed)
"True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity
to a worthy purpose." -Helen Keller (1880-1968), American Writer
"You only know what happiness is once you're married. But then it's too late."
~Peter Sellers
"Happiness is wanting what you have." ~ Anonymous
"You need a reason to be sad. You don't need a reason to be happy." ~Louis
Sachar, Sideways Stories from Wayside School
Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. ~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"Happiness is a warm gun." ~ The Beatles
"Happiness is a warm puppy." ~ Charles M. Schulz
You always know, at this very moment, exactly what it would be to look, and
feel, and be, and act completely Happy. ~ Adi Da Samraj
I have now reigned about 50 years in victory or peace, beloved by my
subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors,
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. - Abd Er-Rahman III of Spain: (960 C.E.)
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 don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones
among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to
serve.
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
Albert Schweitzer:
Algernon Black:
Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the
Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of
supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each
world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people
may grow in vision, stature and dedication.
Allan K. Chalmers:
The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and
something to hope for.
Amy Lowell:
Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.
We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and
yet the same.
Anne Frank
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in
the bosom of my family.
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life;
and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is
sunshine.
Thomas Jefferson:
Anne Frank:
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.
Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes
to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.
If you can find true contentment, it will last forever.
LaoTzu
A well guarded mind brings happiness. Those who are free from all worldly
desires will attain Nirvana. Never covet what others have. It is deadly sin
which grows away from all happiness. Learn to be happy with what you have.
Buddha
They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
Confucius
Even the most mundane objects are things of wonder, if we stop to look at
them, and the fact that we are alive is the biggest wonder of all.
David Fontana, Zen
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy,
practice compassion.
The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet
Happiness is a continuous creative activity.
Baba Amte (born in 1915), Founder of the "Sanctuary of Love", Anandwan, India
Aristotle:
Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient
Benjamin Disraeli:
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
Bertrand Russell:
The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest
exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we
live.
Buddha:
Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.
Carl Jung:
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in
the year's course. 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.
Claude Monet:
The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.
Edith Wharton:
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
Edward de Bono:
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our
expectations.
Eric Hoffer:
You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.
Happiness is attained through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller, 19th century deaf and blind activist
As for happiness, it is not something you experience, it's something you
remember.
Mark Twain
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They
chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the
emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to
search was within.
Ramona L. Anderson
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness
which this world affords.
Samuel Johnson
You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change
your expectation.
Bette Davis
There is no stress in the world, only people thinking stressful thoughts and
then acting on them.
Wayne Dyer
The truth which has made us free will in the end make us glad also.
Felix Adler:
Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you
will be happy to hear the phone is for you.
Fran Leibowitz:
Francoise de Motteville:
The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our
pleasure.
Franklin D. Roosevelt:
Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of
achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
George Burns:
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Sand:
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
HH the Dalai Lama:
When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel
loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
HH the Dalai Lama:
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy,
practice compassion.
HH the Dalai Lama:
Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as
the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether
we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit
from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of
our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.
This entry continued ...
Helen Keller:
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we
see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that
which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for
ourselves.
Helen Keller:
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 which has been opened for us.
Helen Keller:
Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not
attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Henry David Thoreau:
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau:
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to
bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other
reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
Horace Friess:
All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.
John Barrymore:
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
John D. Rockefeller:
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
John Milton:
The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of
Heaven.
Kalidasa:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
Kin Hubbard:
It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty an' wealth have both
failed.
Leo Buscaglia:
What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to
choose life.
Ludwig Wittgenstein:
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to
enjoy ourselves.
M. Scott Peck:
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are
feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such
moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts
and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
Marcel Proust:
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners
who make our souls blossom.
Margaret Bonnano:
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
Mark Twain:
Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.
Mark Twain:
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.
Mark Twain:
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.
Mark Twain:
Happiness is a Swedish sunset -- it is there for all, but most of us look the
other way and lose it.
Mark Twain:
The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our
wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a
happy and a virtuous people.
The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our
circumstances.
Martha Washington:
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in
harmony.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another
city." - George Burns
"Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions." ~Aristotle
"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities." ~Aldous Huxley
Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we
get, but we make a life by what we give.
Norman MacEwan:
The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things
is of rather low quality on the whole and less even in quantity than it looks to
those who have not tried it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes:
Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.
Pearl S. Buck:
Peyton Conway March:
There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most
in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by
giving them to someone else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
To fill the hour -- that is happiness.
Ramona L. Anderson:
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase
idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the
emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to
search was within.
Robert Heinlein:
Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to
your own.
Robert Louis Stevenson:
There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we
sow anonymous benefits upon the world.
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
Sophocles:
Independence is happiness.
Susan B. Anthony:
Happiness, it seems to me, consists of two things: first, in being where you
belong, and second -- and best -- in comfortably going through everyday life,
that is, having had a good night's sleep and not being hurt by new shoes.
Theodor Fontane:
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can
be the source of your joy.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
Willa Cather:
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great.
"How to gain, how to keep, and how to recover happiness is in fact for
most men at all times the secret motive for all they do."
William James
"Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized."
Gilbert K. Chesterton
"It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time and be bored all the while."
Don Marquis
Absolutely, God's allies will have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.
They are those who believe and lead a righteous life. For them happiness in this
life, and in the Hereafter. Such is God's inviolable law.
This is the true triumph.
Quran
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in
harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and
strong. The amount of work is the same.
Francesca Reigler
Happiness, if attainable at all, must be sought by reflection upon things
that are remote from the impressions of sense.
Plotinus (A.D. 204-270), the Founder of Neoplatonism
Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best
activity, which is contemplative. Practical virtue brings only a secondary kind
of happiness; the supreme happiness is in the exercise of reason, for reason,
more than anything else, is man.
Aristotle (B.C. 384 322)
he happiest people don't worry too much about whether life is fair or not,
they just get on with it.
- Andrew Matthews, "Happiness in a Nutshell" ( $ ) ( ? )
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 that you're not going to be very happy. If someone
bases his happiness or unhappiness on major events like a great new 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
We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different
and yet the same.
- Anne Frank
Think of all the beauty thats still left in and around you and be happy!
- Anne Frank
Happiness is a warm puppy.
- Charles Schulz
When I meet people from other cultures I know that they too want happiness
and do not want suffering, this allows me to see them as brothers and sisters.
- Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
- Dave Barry
Always do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don't
matter, and those who matter don't mind
- Dr. Suess
You get more joy out of the giving to others, and should put a good deal of
thought into the happiness you are able to give.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a conscious
effort to live useful lives. Their happiness, of course, is not a shallow
exhilaration where life is one continuos intoxicating party. Rather, their
happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that comes when they believe their
lives have meaning and that they are making a difference for good in the world.
- Ernest A. Fitzgerald
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 Koenig
Man is fond of counting his troubles but he does not count his joys. If he
counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness
provided for it.
- Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky
There is work that is work and there is play that is play; there is play that
is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lies happiness.
- Gelett Burgess
If you have nothing else to do, look about you and see if there isn't
something close at hand that you can improve! It may make you wealthy, though it
is more likely that it will make you happy.
- George Matthew Adams
People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because
they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.
- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies,
and not be the biggest pygmie that he can? Let everyone mind his own business,
and endeavor to be what he was made.
- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden" ( $ ) ( ? )
For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be
trampeled.
- Hunter S. Thompson
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
- Ingrid Bergman
The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference
between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
- J.D. Salinger
...and I would have wished it away if I had not become occupied with this
other sensation, a sensation I had no single word for. I could feel myself full
of happiness, but it was a happiness I had never experienced before, and my
happiness would spill out of me and run all the way down a long, long road and
then the road would come to an end and I would feel empty and sad, for what
could come after this? How would it end?
- Jamacia Kincaid, "The Autobiography of My Mother" ( $ ) ( ? )
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do,
something to love and something to hope for.
- Joseph Addison
Live by the foma [harmless untruths] that make you brave, and kind, and
healthy, and happy.
- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle" ( $ ) ( ? )
One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and
Nature shall not be broken.
- Leo Tolstoy
Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is
crime.
- Marquis de Sade
I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery
depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.
- Martha Washington
Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in
avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
- Norman Vincent Peale
Bigamy is having one wife too many; monogamy is the same.
- Oscar Wilde
Everything exists in limited quantity - especially happiness.
- Picasso
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is
unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that
perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.
- Primo Levi
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can
sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best
, you very often get it.
- Somerset Maugham
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
- Sophocles
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice
cream while it's on your plate.
- Thorton Wilder
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved
for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
- Victor Hugo
The essentials to happiness are something to love, something to do, and
something to hope for.
- William Blake
At certain moments, always unforseen, I become happy... I look at the
strangers near as if I had known them all my life... everything fills me with
affection... It may be an hour before the mood passes, but lately I seem to
understand that I enter upon it the moment I cease to hate.
- William Butler Yeats
Happiness is man's greatest aim in life. Tranquility and rationality are the
cornerstones of happiness.
Epicurus
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.
Epictetus
The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.
Thucydides (B.C. 460 400)
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare
Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
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.
Earl Nightingale
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to
consume wealth without producing it.
George Bernard Shaw
I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks
into his work for a reply.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than
their own happiness: on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind,
even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself the ideal
end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
There is no such thing as happiness, for an unfulfilled wish causes pain, and
attainment brings only satiety.
Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires rather than in
attempting to satisfy them.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without
action.
Benjamin Disraeli
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