Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Mill, John Stuart

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what's there: all of it.

Rohr, Richard

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

John Berry

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Kin Hubbard

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

Richter, Jean Paul

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

Lubbock, Sir John

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns

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

10.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Addison, Joseph

11.

When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

12.

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

13.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise.

Thomas, John M.

15.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Russell, Bertrand

16.

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

17.

When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.

Nicole Kidman

18.

True happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.

Kennedy, John F.

19.

The thing that counts most in the pursuit of happiness is choosing the right companion.

20.

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.

Szasz, Thomas

21.

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.

Wolfe, W, Beran

22.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

23.

In order to be truly happy, you must live along with, and you must stand for something larger than yourself.

Oprah Winfrey

24.

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

Maxwell, William

25.

There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

Dyer, Wayne

26.

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

Nash, Ogden

27.

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.

Russell, Bertrand

28.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

29.

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

Bob Newhart

30.

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world. Someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

Chalmers, Allan K.

31.

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

32.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

Seneca

33.

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

34.

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger's gardens.

Jerrold, Douglas William

35.

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 Szasz

36.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

Frank, Anne

37.

Happiness is the act of being tough with ourselves and tender with others.

38.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

39.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, Let no one be called happy till his death; to which I would add, Let no one, till his death be called unhappy.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

40.

The biggest lie on the planet: When I get what I want, I will be happy.

41.

Happiness is good for the body but sorrow strengthens the spirit.

42.

Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

43.

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

Roy M. Goodman

44.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Maurier, Daphne Du

45.

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

Watson, Lilian Eichler

46.

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

47.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil --or else an absolute ignorance.

Greene, Graham

48.

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.

Prevert, Jacques

49.

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

Josh Billings

50.

The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.