Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.

- Christopher Morley

Best Quotes about Happiness

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

Chambers, Oswald

All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!

Bob Newhart

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.

Goldsmith, Oliver

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of unhappiness.

Lao-Tzu

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Addison, Joseph

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

C. P. Snow

The greatest joy of life is to love and be loved.

Clyde, R.D.

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.

Jefferson, Thomas

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

10.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

Storm Jameson

11.

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things -- not the great occasions -- that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.

Hope, Bob

12.

What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

13.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

David Nicholls

14.

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

Smith, Adam

15.

Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.

Dewey, John

16.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

17.

Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.

Benjamin Franklin

18.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

19.

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness -- It's growth -- mental, financial, you name it.

Geneen, Harold S.

20.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

21.

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are able to inspire.

Prazlin, Duchess

22.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

Yeats, William Butler

23.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

24.

Like swimming, riding, writing, or playing golf, happiness can be learned.

Sokoloff, Boris

25.

Happiness... she loves, to see men at work. She loves sweat, weariness, self sacrifice. She will be found not in places but lurking in cornfields and factories; and hovering over littered desks; she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child.

Grayson, David

26.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.

Billings, Josh

27.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

28.

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance.

James, William

29.

We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

30.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Frost

31.

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want, and killing ourselves to get it.

Herold, Don

32.

The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.

Al Batt

33.

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

Walters, J. Donald

34.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

O'Malley, Austin

35.

Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.

Bierce, Ambrose

36.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

Mill, John Stuart

38.

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

Richter, Jean Paul

39.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

Jonathan Haidt

40.

Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.

Maxwell, William

41.

The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool. Yet people sometimes do just this. They work hard at a task and expect some special euphoria at the end. But when they achieve success and find only moderate and short-lived pleasure, they ask is that all there is? They devalue their accomplishments as a striving after wind. We can call this the progress principle: Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them.

Jonathan Haidt

42.

A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Lincoln, Abraham

43.

Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result. Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.

Heinlein, Robert

44.

If you cannot renounce the world the genius of happiness will never salute you.

Prutz

45.

Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination.

Roy M. Goodman

46.

Happiness doesn't come from doing what we like to do but from liking what we have to do.

Peterson, Wilferd A.

47.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

48.

Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.

Lane, Rose Wilder

49.

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.

Robertson Davies

50.

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

Hazlitt, William