Motivational Quotes

Happiness

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

- Stendhal, Henri B.

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Some of us might find happiness if we quit struggling so desperately for it.

Feather, William

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

Happiness is a journey not a destination.

Sweetland, Ben

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

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

Beckett, Samuel

Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

Kafka, Franz

10.

I've grown to realize the joy that comes from little victories is preferable to the fun that comes from ease and the pursuit of pleasure.

Lawana Blackwell

11.

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

Maxwell, William

12.

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

13.

We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.

Landor, Walter Savage

14.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

15.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

16.

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

Diderot, Denis

17.

It is kind of happiness to know to what extent we may be unhappy.

18.

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

Meredith, Owen

19.

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

20.

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

Josh Billings

21.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.

Camus, Albert

22.

Happiness consists in activity -- it is a running stream, not a stagnant pool.

Mason, John L.

23.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

Johnson, Samuel

24.

In order to have great happiness, you have to have great pain and unhappiness-otherwise how would you know when you're happy?

Caron, Leslie

25.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

26.

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

Proust, Marcel

27.

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

28.

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

Stossel, John

29.

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

Dalai Lama

30.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

31.

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

Alcott, Louisa May

32.

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Russell, Bertrand

33.

The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

34.

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

35.

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

Meltzer, Bernard

36.

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

J.K. Rowling

37.

What would you call the highest happiness? Wratislaw was ask. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.

Buchan, John

38.

My happiness derives from knowing the people I love are happy.

Ketchel, Holly

39.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

40.

Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Keller, Helen

41.

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

42.

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

Heywood, John

43.

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

Watson, Lilian Eichler

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

Lucas, E. V.

48.

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

Kin Hubbard

49.

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