Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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

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

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

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

Bennett, William John

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

Feather, William

The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick.

Swetchine, Anne Sophie

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.

Goldsmith, Oliver

10.

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Barthel, Mildred

11.

The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what's there: all of it.

Rohr, Richard

12.

Happiness comes from... some curious adjustment to life.

Walpole, Sir Hugh

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.

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

Heywood, John

15.

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world. Someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

Chalmers, Allan K.

16.

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

Sarnoff, David

17.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

18.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Wilde, Oscar

19.

When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.

Nicole Kidman

20.

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

The laws of Manu

21.

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

Prevert, Jacques

22.

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

Sokoloff, Boris

23.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Ayn Rand

24.

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

Aristotle

25.

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

26.

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

Billings, Josh

27.

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

28.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

29.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

30.

Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.

Rooney, Andy

31.

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

Koenig, Frederick

32.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Schweitzer, Albert

33.

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

Bennett, Arnold

34.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

35.

Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Keller, Helen

36.

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

Diderot, Denis

37.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

38.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

John Berry

40.

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

41.

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy

Kant, Immanuel

42.

Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.

Socrates

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Jean Houston

46.

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

47.

You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.

Horace

48.

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

Bergson, Henri L.

49.

For who is pleased with himself.

Johnson, Samuel

50.

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