Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

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

Upanishads, Veda

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again -- this is the brave and happy life.

Buckrose, J.E

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

Landor, Walter Savage

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

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

Happiness is not a reward -- it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment -- it is a result.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

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

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

Richter, Jean Paul

10.

If you can't be happy where you are, it's a cinch you can't be happy where you ain't.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

11.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

Epicurus

12.

Happiness adds and multiplies, as we divide it with others.

Nielsen, A.

13.

Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

Rubinstein, Arthur

14.

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

Smith, Adam

15.

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

16.

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

Alfred Lord Tennyson

17.

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.

Prevert, Jacques

18.

Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.

Socrates

19.

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

Yeats, William Butler

20.

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

The laws of Manu

21.

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

Oscar Levant

22.

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

Yeats, William Butler

23.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

Jonathan Haidt

24.

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

25.

Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from a Heaven, at our very door

Edwards, Tryon

26.

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

27.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

La Bruyere, Jean De

28.

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

29.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

30.

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

Brande, Dorothea

31.

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

Diderot, Denis

32.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

33.

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

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert

34.

Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower, and draws all good things toward you. Allow your love to nourish yourself as well as others. Do not strain after the needs of life. It is sufficient to be quietly alert and aware of them. In this way life proceeds more naturally and effortlessly. Life is here to Enjoy!

Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh

35.

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

36.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

37.

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

Dumas, Alexandre

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Apollinaire, Guillaume

42.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

Billings, Josh

43.

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

44.

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

45.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

46.

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

47.

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

Maxwell, William

48.

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

Fichte, Johann G.

49.

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

Mason, John L.

50.

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.