Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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 month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else.

- Proverb, Chinese

Best Quotes about Happiness

Farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters -- where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives, as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.

Erikson, Erik H.

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

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.

Walters, J. Donald

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

Horton, Doug

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.

Sondreal, Palmer

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

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a life time.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

10.

Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.

Anderson, Greg

11.

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

Goodman, Roy

12.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

Epicurus

13.

Success is getting and achieving what you want. Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get.

Meltzer, Bernard

14.

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

15.

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.

Carnegie, Dale

16.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

Proust, Marcel

17.

Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.

W. Somerset Maugham

18.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

19.

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

20.

Happiness is a hard thing because it is achieved only by making others happy.

Cloete, Stuart

21.

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

Alfred Lord Tennyson

22.

Men expect that religion should cost them no pains, that happiness should drop into their laps without any design and endeavor on their part, and that, after they have done what they please while they live, God should snatch them up to heaven when they die. But though the commandments of God be not grievous, yet it is fit to let men know that they are not thus easy.

Tillotson, John

23.

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

24.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Happiness is not so much in having or sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Macewan, Norman

28.

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

Watson, Lilian Eichler

29.

Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty to be happy. So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers.

Bonnell, John S.

30.

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

Nash, Ogden

31.

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

Aristotle

32.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

Meredith, Owen

33.

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

Bob Newhart

34.

Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose.

Stossel, John

35.

There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.

Sivananda, Sri Swami

36.

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

37.

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

Prazlin, Duchess

38.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Sade, Marquis De

39.

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.

Downs, Hugh

40.

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

Bono, Edward De

41.

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.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

42.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Abraham Lincoln

43.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

44.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

45.

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

Prutz

46.

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

47.

Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.

Traherne, Thomas

48.

The man who is born with a talent which he was meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

O'Malley, Austin

50.

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