Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Happiness is activity.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Proust, Marcel

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Alda, Alan

Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living.

Ginott, Haim

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

Horton, Doug

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

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

Beckett, Samuel

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

Mason, John L.

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

Josh Billings

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

Frank, Anne

11.

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

Watson, Lilian Eichler

12.

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

Russell, Bertrand

13.

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

14.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Johnson, Samuel

15.

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

16.

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

18.

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

Nicole Kidman

19.

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

20.

Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and products of our creative and intellectual processes, enjoying the ecstasy of transcendent oneness with the universe.

Muriel, James

21.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

22.

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

Mill, John Stuart

23.

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

Chambers, Oswald

24.

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

25.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

26.

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

Stossel, John

27.

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

28.

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

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

29.

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

Walters, J. Donald

30.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

31.

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.

32.

Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation: know the nature of joy.

Upanishads, Veda

33.

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

37.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

Cervantes, Miguel De

38.

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

Abraham Lincoln

39.

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation.

Freud, Sigmund

40.

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

41.

That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.

Waitley, Denis

42.

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.

Doris Lessing

43.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Addison, Joseph

44.

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

45.

Like swimming, riding, writing, or playing golf, happiness can be learned.

Sokoloff, Boris

46.

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

Bentham, Jeremy

47.

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

48.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

49.

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

Epictetus

50.

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