Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Success is getting and achieving what you want. Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get.

- Meltzer, Bernard

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

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

Walpole, Sir Hugh

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

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

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

Bierce, Ambrose

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

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.

Rubin, Theodore I.

10.

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

Nicole Kidman

11.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

James Oppenheim

12.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.

Walters, J. Donald

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

19.

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

20.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

21.

The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is love, laughter, and work.

Hubbard, Elbert

22.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

23.

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.

Barrie, Sir James M.

24.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Jung, Carl

25.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

Saroyan, William

26.

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

Eddie Cantor

27.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

La Bruyere, Jean De

28.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

Johnson, Samuel

30.

The secret to happiness is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do.

31.

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

Richter, Jean Paul

32.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi

33.

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

34.

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

35.

In order to be truly happy, you must live along with, and you must stand for something larger than yourself.

Oprah Winfrey

36.

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

Proverb, Scottish

37.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

38.

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

39.

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness -- the sense that is where we really belong.

Greene, Graham

40.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

Seneca

41.

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us so live as to deserve happiness.

Fichte, Johann G.

42.

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

43.

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

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

44.

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

Oliphant, Margaret

45.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

The glow of satisfaction which follows the consciousness of doing our level best never comes to a human being from any other experience.