Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

Meredith, Owen

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

Horton, Doug

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower-Author Unknown People need your love the most when they appear to deserve it the least.

Harrigan, John

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

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

Jean Jacques Rousseau

The really happy man never laughs -- seldom -- though he may smile. He does not need to laugh, for laughter, like weeping is a relief of mental tension -- and the happy are not over strung.

Aveling, Prof. F. A. P.

10.

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

11.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

12.

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.

Rubin, Theodore I.

13.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.

Camus, Albert

14.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

Epicurus

15.

Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.

Aurelius, Marcus

16.

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

Jean Houston

17.

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

Camus, Albert

18.

Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.

Walters, J. Donald

19.

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

Greene, Graham

20.

Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult.

Ann Radcliffe

21.

The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.

Al Batt

22.

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

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert

23.

Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

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.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

Lee, Bruce

26.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.

Angelis, Barbara De

27.

Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.

Proverb, Scottish

28.

Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.

Goodman, Roy

29.

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

Sokoloff, Boris

30.

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness -- the sense that is where we really belong.

Greene, Graham

31.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

32.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

33.

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want, and killing ourselves to get it.

Herold, Don

34.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

35.

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

36.

Happiness is a by product of an effort to make someone else happy.

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

37.

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

Jonathan Haidt

38.

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

39.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

40.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.

Young, Margaret

41.

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

42.

Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.

Chopra, Deepak

43.

Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.

W. Somerset Maugham

44.

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

Bono, Edward De

45.

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

46.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

47.

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

48.

I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace - a connection to what matters.

Oprah Winfrey

49.

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

C. P. Snow

50.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William