Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and products of our creative and intellectual processes, enjoying the ecstasy of transcendent oneness with the universe.

- Muriel, James

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Josh Billings

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness -- It's growth -- mental, financial, you name it.

Geneen, Harold S.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Oliphant, Margaret

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

Joy comes from using your potential.

Schultz, Will

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

10.

The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.

Rooney, Andy

12.

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

Jeans, Sir James

13.

Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.

Benjamin Franklin

14.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

15.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

Billings, Josh

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

23.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Addison, Joseph

24.

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.

25.

Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise.

Thomas, John M.

26.

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

Garrison, Theodosia

27.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

28.

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

29.

To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve happiness.

Fichte, Johann G.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Ketchel, Holly

33.

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

34.

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

Nash, Ogden

35.

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy

Kant, Immanuel

36.

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.

37.

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

38.

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

39.

Happiness is the longing for repetition.

Kundera, Milan

40.

But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.

Carlyle, Thomas

41.

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation.

Freud, Sigmund

42.

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

43.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

44.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

45.

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

Russell, Bertrand

46.

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

47.

It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit.

Waitley, Denis

48.

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

49.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

50.

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.

Muggeridge, Malcolm