Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Bono, Edward De

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.

Maslow, Abraham H.

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

Horton, Doug

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

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

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

Solon

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

Greene, Graham

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

Socrates

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

Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.

Rooney, Andy

10.

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

Alfred Lord Tennyson

11.

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

Smith, Adam

12.

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

13.

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

Addison, Joseph

14.

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

15.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

16.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Baruch Spinoza

17.

The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.

Stein, Ben

18.

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.

Jeans, Sir James

19.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Dumas, Alexandre

20.

Happiness consists of three things; Someone to love, work to do, and a clear conscience.

21.

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

The laws of Manu

22.

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

23.

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

John Berry

24.

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.

Yeats, William Butler

25.

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

Byron, Lord

26.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; The wise grows it under his feet.

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert

27.

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

28.

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.

Strindberg, J. August

29.

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

Dalai Lama

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Sivananda, Sri Swami

33.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Thoreau, Henry David

34.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

35.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness

Orwell, George

36.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Santayana, George

37.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

38.

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Kingsley, Charles

39.

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

40.

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

Epictetus

41.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

42.

If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; If you want to be happy for life, plant a tree.

Proverb, English

43.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

William Cowper

44.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

45.

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy

Kant, Immanuel

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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