Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you're ever given the choice between happiness and intelligence choose happiness

Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance.

The laws of Manu

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

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

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

Yeats, William Butler

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

Bierce, Ambrose

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

Epictetus

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

In order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks. It's true these risks can put them in danger of being hurt.

Meg Cabot

11.

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

Bergson, Henri L.

12.

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.

Koenig, Frederick

13.

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

14.

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

Sarnoff, David

15.

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

Herold, Don

16.

I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace - a connection to what matters.

Oprah Winfrey

17.

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

Kin Hubbard

18.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

19.

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Aurelius, Marcus

22.

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

23.

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

Mahatma Gandhi

24.

This is the best kind of voyeurism, hearing joy from your neighbors.

Chuck Sigars

25.

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are. Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.

Baughan, R.J.

26.

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

27.

Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult.

Ann Radcliffe

28.

Gaiety --a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Diderot, Denis

29.

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)

30.

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

31.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

32.

Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.

Solon

33.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications are not your life.

J.K. Rowling

34.

Those who seek happiness miss it, and those who discuss it, lack it.

Jackson, Holbrook

35.

The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick.

Swetchine, Anne Sophie

36.

The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is love, laughter, and work.

Hubbard, Elbert

37.

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

38.

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

39.

We wish to be happier than other people; and this is difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

Montesquieu, Charles De

40.

There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.

Brande, Dorothea

41.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Schweitzer, Albert

42.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.

Camus, Albert

43.

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

Mill, John Stuart

44.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

Rockefeller, John D.

45.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

46.

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.

Marden, Orison Swett

47.

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.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

48.

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

49.

After what we can say you can be sure the happy heart will make the happy day.

50.

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

Lane, Rose Wilder