Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Peterson, Wilferd A.

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Barthel, Mildred

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

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

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

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

Kennedy, John F.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Waitley, Denis

13.

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

14.

Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.

Maxwell, William

15.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Addison, Joseph

16.

It's not a question of happiness, it's a requirement. Consider the alternative.

Horton, Doug

17.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

21.

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

Anderson, Greg

22.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Frost

23.

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

Stossel, John

24.

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

Buchan, John

25.

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

26.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Dumas, Alexandre

27.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Stendhal, Henri B.

28.

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

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

29.

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

Ketchel, Holly

30.

What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

Meltzer, Bernard

35.

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

36.

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

Dalai Lama

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.

Sondreal, Palmer

40.

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

Roy M. Goodman

41.

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

42.

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

Oscar Levant

43.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications are not your life.

J.K. Rowling

44.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Ayn Rand

45.

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

46.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

47.

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

Montesquieu, Charles De

48.

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

49.

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

Horton, Doug

50.

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

Garrison, Theodosia