Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

- Robertson Davies

Best Quotes about Happiness

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Kingsley, Charles

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

Stossel, John

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.

Landor, Walter Savage

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

Smith, Adam

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

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

Geneen, Harold S.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Fichte, Johann G.

13.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

O'Malley, Austin

14.

We take greater pains to persuade others we are happy than in trying to think so ourselves.

Confucius

15.

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

16.

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.

Marden, Orison Swett

17.

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

18.

The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

19.

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

Walpole, Sir Hugh

20.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Thoreau, Henry David

21.

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

Huxley, Aldous

22.

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

Johnson, Samuel

23.

Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.

Aurelius, Marcus

24.

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

Addison, Joseph

25.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

26.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

27.

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.

Democritus

28.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

29.

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

30.

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

Meltzer, Bernard

31.

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

Nicole Kidman

32.

What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement.

Nash, Fay B.

33.

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

34.

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

35.

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

Horton, Doug

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

Proverb, Chinese

39.

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

Chambers, Oswald

40.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

41.

The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.

Al Batt

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Dumas, Alexandre

46.

Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

Bennett, William John

47.

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

Mahatma Gandhi

48.

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

Bentham, Jeremy

49.

There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

Dyer, Wayne

50.

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