Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.

Murdoch, Iris

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

Jonathan Haidt

My happiness derives from knowing the people I love are happy.

Ketchel, Holly

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

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

Chambers, Oswald

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Prutz

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

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

Feather, William

10.

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Russell, Bertrand

11.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

12.

Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition. composition.

Hume, David

13.

Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts, while adversity is often as the rain of spring.

Proverb, Chinese

14.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means -- either may do -- the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

Franklin, Benjamin

15.

Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

16.

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are able to inspire.

Prazlin, Duchess

17.

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

Hesse, Hermann

18.

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

Oliphant, Margaret

19.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

20.

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

Rohn, Jim

21.

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

22.

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

Diderot, Denis

23.

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

24.

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

25.

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

Alfred Lord Tennyson

26.

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

C. P. Snow

27.

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

28.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Spencer, Herbert

29.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

30.

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

31.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

William Cowper

32.

No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.

Muller, Max

33.

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

34.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

35.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Dalai Lama

36.

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

37.

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

Lane, Rose Wilder

38.

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

39.

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

Ann Radcliffe

40.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications are not your life.

J.K. Rowling

41.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Thoreau, Henry David

42.

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.

Carnegie, Dale

43.

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

44.

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

Boone, Daniel

45.

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

46.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

47.

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

48.

I'm fulfilled in what I do... I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes -- the finer things of life -- would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.

King, Coretta Scott

49.

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

Yeats, William Butler

50.

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