Motivational Quotes

Happiness

This is the best kind of voyeurism, hearing joy from your neighbors.

- Chuck Sigars

Best Quotes about Happiness

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

C. P. Snow

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

Rohn, Jim

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

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

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

Stein, Ben

There's a hope for every woe, and a balm for every pain, but the first joys of our heart come never back again!

Gilfillan, Robert

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

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

Stossel, John

10.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

11.

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

12.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

13.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Aurelius, Marcus

14.

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.

15.

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

Meltzer, Bernard

16.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

17.

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.

18.

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

19.

Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.

Peale, Norman Vincent

20.

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

21.

For who is pleased with himself.

Johnson, Samuel

22.

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

Maxwell, William

23.

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

Feather, William

24.

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

Epicurus

25.

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

Landor, Walter Savage

26.

Not what you have, but what you see; Not what you see, but what you choose; Not what seems fair, but what is true; Not what you dream, but what you do; Not what you take, but what you give; Not as you pray, but as you live. These are the things that mar or bless The sum of human happiness.

27.

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

28.

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

Huxley, Aldous

29.

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

Upanishads, Veda

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.

True happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.

Kennedy, John F.

32.

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness -- It's growth -- mental, financial, you name it.

Geneen, Harold S.

33.

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

Barrie, Sir James M.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Bono, Edward De

37.

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.

Sondreal, Palmer

38.

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

Orwell, George

39.

People who never achieve happiness are the ones who complain whenever they're awake, and whenever they're asleep, they are thinking about what to complain about tomorrow.

Zimbler, Adam

40.

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

41.

We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

42.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

43.

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

44.

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.

Porter, Jane

45.

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

46.

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

James Oppenheim

47.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

48.

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

49.

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.

Marden, Orison Swett

50.

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