Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts, while adversity is often as the rain of spring.

- Proverb, Chinese

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.

Yeats, William Butler

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

Keyes Jr., Ken

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

Ayn Rand

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

Ketchel, Holly

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.

The greatest joy of life is to love and be loved.

Clyde, R.D.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle

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.

10.

Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts, while adversity is often as the rain of spring.

Proverb, Chinese

11.

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

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

12.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

13.

Happiness is not pleasure, it is victory.

Ziglar, Zig

14.

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.

15.

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

Jean Houston

16.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

Dalai Lama

18.

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

19.

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

20.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Johnson, Samuel

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

24.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

Meredith, Owen

25.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

Carlyle, Thomas

26.

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

27.

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

Abraham Lincoln

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

31.

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

32.

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

Beckett, Samuel

33.

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

Walpole, Sir Hugh

34.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

Waitley, Denis

35.

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

Kant, Immanuel

36.

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

Epicurus

37.

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are able to inspire.

Prazlin, Duchess

38.

Happiness is not in having being; it is in doing.

Watson, Lilian Eichler

39.

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

Waitley, Denis

40.

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

Robert Frost

41.

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

Saroyan, William

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.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

44.

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

Koenig, Frederick

45.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

46.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

47.

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

Josh Billings

48.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns

49.

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

50.

When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

Forbes, Malcolm S.