Motivational Quotes

Happiness

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.

- Jeans, Sir James

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Greene, Graham

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

Socrates

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

Lubbock, Sir John

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

David Nicholls

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 is activity.

Aristotle

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.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself --it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Twain, Mark

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

10.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

11.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

12.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

Johnson, Samuel

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Szasz, Thomas

16.

The hardest habit of all to break is the terrible habit of happiness.

Garrison, Theodosia

17.

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

18.

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

The laws of Manu

19.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

20.

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

Jean Jacques Rousseau

21.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

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

23.

Farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters -- where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives, as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.

Erikson, Erik H.

24.

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.

25.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Louise Bogan

26.

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

Epictetus

27.

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

28.

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

29.

After what we can say you can be sure the happy heart will make the happy day.

30.

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are. Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.

Baughan, R.J.

31.

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

Kennedy, John F.

32.

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

33.

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

Carnegie, Dale

34.

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)

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

39.

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a life time.

40.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns

41.

We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.

Boyd, William

42.

In order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks. It's true these risks can put them in danger of being hurt.

Meg Cabot

43.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

44.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

45.

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Thomas Szasz

46.

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

47.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Russell, Bertrand

48.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

49.

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

50.

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

Diderot, Denis