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 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

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

Walpole, Sir Hugh

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

Proverb, Scottish

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

Horace

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

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

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

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

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

Proust, Marcel

10.

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

Kennedy, John F.

11.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

12.

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.

Doris Lessing

13.

Happiness doesn't come from doing what we like to do but from liking what we have to do.

Peterson, Wilferd A.

14.

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

Hesse, Hermann

15.

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

Aristotle

16.

To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life slowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

Russell, Bertrand

17.

Happiness is the act of being tough with ourselves and tender with others.

18.

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

Jonathan Haidt

19.

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

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

20.

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

21.

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

22.

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

Carnegie, Dale

23.

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

24.

Happiness is perfume, you can't pour it on somebody else without getting a few drops on yourself

Zee, James Van Der

25.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Johnson, Samuel

26.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

27.

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden.

Wolfe, W, Beran

28.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

29.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

30.

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

31.

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

Jackson, Holbrook

32.

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

33.

Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.

Socrates

34.

Happiness is not in having being; it is in doing.

Watson, Lilian Eichler

35.

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)

36.

Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.

Chopra, Deepak

37.

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

38.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

39.

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

40.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

41.

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

Smith, Adam

42.

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

43.

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

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

44.

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

Maxwell, William

46.

A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Lincoln, Abraham

47.

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

48.

Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

Rubinstein, Arthur

49.

Happiness... she loves, to see men at work. She loves sweat, weariness, self sacrifice. She will be found not in places but lurking in cornfields and factories; and hovering over littered desks; she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child.

Grayson, David

50.

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

Ketchel, Holly