Motivational Quotes

Happiness

The secret of happiness is something to do.

- Burroughs, John

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is a journey not a destination.

Sweetland, Ben

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

Storm Jameson

For who is pleased with himself.

Johnson, Samuel

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Barthel, Mildred

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

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

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

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

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

10.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

11.

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

12.

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

The laws of Manu

13.

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.

14.

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.

Barrie, Sir James M.

15.

The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

17.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

18.

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

Camus, Albert

19.

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

20.

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

Jeans, Sir James

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Prutz

24.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

25.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

26.

Where one is wise two are happy.

Proverb

27.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

28.

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

Sokoloff, Boris

29.

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

30.

There is no happiness; there are only moments of happiness.

Proverb, Spanish

31.

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

Diderot, Denis

32.

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

Horton, Doug

33.

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

34.

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

Byron, Lord

35.

If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.

Heatter, Gabriel

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.

Benjamin Franklin

40.

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

41.

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

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.

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

Smith, Adam

44.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle

45.

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger's gardens.

Jerrold, Douglas William

46.

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

Mill, John Stuart

47.

In order to be truly happy, you must live along with, and you must stand for something larger than yourself.

Oprah Winfrey

48.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

49.

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

Richter, Jean Paul

50.

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