Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Happiness is the longing for repetition.

- Kundera, Milan

Best Quotes about Happiness

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else.

Proverb, Chinese

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

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

Zee, James Van Der

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

Heywood, John

Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

Josh Billings

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

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

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

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

10.

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

John Berry

11.

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

12.

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again -- this is the brave and happy life.

Buckrose, J.E

13.

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

14.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

15.

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

16.

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

17.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

18.

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

19.

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

20.

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

21.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

22.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Abraham Lincoln

23.

What would you call the highest happiness? Wratislaw was ask. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.

Buchan, John

24.

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

25.

Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.

26.

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

Prutz

27.

Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept.

Keyes Jr., Ken

28.

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

Alcott, Louisa May

29.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

Frank, Anne

30.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

31.

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

32.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

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

Boone, Daniel

34.

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

C. P. Snow

35.

Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.

Anderson, Greg

36.

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

37.

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

Jean Houston

38.

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

Prevert, Jacques

39.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.

Camus, Albert

40.

If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; If you want to be happy for life, plant a tree.

Proverb, English

41.

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

Bono, Edward De

42.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, Let no one be called happy till his death; to which I would add, Let no one, till his death be called unhappy.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

43.

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

Hesse, Hermann

44.

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness.

Lao-tzu

45.

Happiness consists in activity -- it is a running stream, not a stagnant pool.

Mason, John L.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!

Bob Newhart

50.

Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.

Goodman, Roy