Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Herold, Don

Best Quotes about Happiness

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

Black, Hugo

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

Saroyan, William

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

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

The thing that counts most in the pursuit of happiness is choosing the right companion.

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

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.

Billings, Josh

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.

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

Epictetus

12.

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

13.

Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty to be happy. So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers.

Bonnell, John S.

14.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

15.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

16.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

17.

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

18.

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

19.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

20.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle

21.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

22.

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

Prutz

23.

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

24.

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

Hazlitt, William

25.

Those who seek happiness miss it, and those who discuss it, lack it.

Jackson, Holbrook

26.

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

Eddie Cantor

27.

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

28.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

Carlyle, Thomas

29.

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

Smith, Adam

30.

We take greater pains to persuade others we are happy than in trying to think so ourselves.

Confucius

31.

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

C. P. Snow

32.

Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.

Lane, Rose Wilder

33.

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

34.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Alda, Alan

35.

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

Kennedy, John F.

36.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

37.

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

Proverb, Scottish

38.

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

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

39.

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

Jean Jacques Rousseau

40.

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

Alfred Lord Tennyson

41.

Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.

Alcott, Louisa May

42.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

43.

Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!

Bradley, Amanda

44.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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.

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

Upanishads, Veda

50.

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