Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Jonathan Haidt

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness

Orwell, George

And isn't that, at it's core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? "Princess" is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. "Princess" is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconces in lace and innocence.

Peggy Orenstein

If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; If you want to be happy for life, plant a tree.

Proverb, English

There's a hope for every woe, and a balm for every pain, but the first joys of our heart come never back again!

Gilfillan, Robert

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us so live as to deserve happiness.

Fichte, Johann G.

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

Oliphant, Margaret

What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement.

Nash, Fay B.

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

10.

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

Hesse, Hermann

11.

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

12.

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

Douglas, Norman

13.

Happiness is the longing for repetition.

Kundera, Milan

14.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

15.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle

16.

We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.

Boyd, William

17.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

18.

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

Edwards, Tryon

19.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself --it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Twain, Mark

20.

Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

21.

Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.

Alcott, Louisa May

22.

Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of others.

Fielding, Henry

23.

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again -- this is the brave and happy life.

Buckrose, J.E

24.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Spencer, Herbert

25.

There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness... is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase the pursuit of happiness is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

26.

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

27.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Dalai Lama

28.

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

Storm Jameson

29.

The world's literature and folklore are full of stories that point out how futile it can be to seek happiness. Rather, happiness is a blessing that comes to you as you go along; a treasure that you incidentally find.

Binstock, Louis

30.

Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.

Proverb, Scottish

31.

Happiness is not in having being; it is in doing.

Watson, Lilian Eichler

32.

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

33.

Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.

Peale, Norman Vincent

34.

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.

Murdoch, Iris

35.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

Lubbock, Sir John

36.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

Frank, Anne

37.

It's not a question of happiness, it's a requirement. Consider the alternative.

Horton, Doug

38.

Happiness in the present is only shattered by comparison with the past.

Horton, Doug

39.

Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

Josh Billings

40.

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower-Author Unknown People need your love the most when they appear to deserve it the least.

Harrigan, John

41.

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.

Democritus

42.

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

43.

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.

Hume, David

44.

The glow of satisfaction which follows the consciousness of doing our level best never comes to a human being from any other experience.

Marden, Orison Swett

45.

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

Christopher Morley

46.

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

47.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

48.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.

Angelis, Barbara De

49.

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

Nash, Ogden

50.

We take greater pains to persuade others we are happy than in trying to think so ourselves.