Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Nicole Kidman

Best Quotes about Happiness

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

Walpole, Sir Hugh

The biggest lie on the planet: When I get what I want, I will be happy.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

The thing that counts most in the pursuit of happiness is choosing the right companion.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

Mill, John Stuart

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

10.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Sade, Marquis De

11.

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.

12.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Jefferson, Thomas

13.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

14.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

15.

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world. Someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

Chalmers, Allan K.

16.

Happiness is good for the body but sorrow strengthens the spirit.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.

Billings, Josh

20.

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

21.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Maurier, Daphne Du

22.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

23.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

24.

Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose.

Stossel, John

25.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Spencer, Herbert

26.

The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

27.

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

Johnson, Samuel

28.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Dalai Lama

30.

This is the best kind of voyeurism, hearing joy from your neighbors.

Chuck Sigars

31.

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

32.

Happiness in the present is only shattered by comparison with the past.

Horton, Doug

33.

We wish to be happier than other people; and this is difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

Montesquieu, Charles De

34.

Men expect that religion should cost them no pains, that happiness should drop into their laps without any design and endeavor on their part, and that, after they have done what they please while they live, God should snatch them up to heaven when they die. But though the commandments of God be not grievous, yet it is fit to let men know that they are not thus easy.

Tillotson, John

35.

The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.

Stein, Ben

36.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

Epicurus

37.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

38.

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.

Hume, David

39.

Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

Franklin, Benjamin

40.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

Beckett, Samuel

41.

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

42.

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Barthel, Mildred

43.

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

44.

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

Lao-Tzu

45.

Happiness is a hard thing because it is achieved only by making others happy.

Cloete, Stuart

46.

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

Oprah Winfrey

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

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.

49.

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.

Levenson, Samuel

50.

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