Motivational Quotes

Happiness

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

- Stendhal, Henri B.

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

Lubbock, Sir John

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Hoffer, Eric

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

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

Walpole, Sir Hugh

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.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness -- the sense that is where we really belong.

Greene, Graham

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

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.

Camus, Albert

10.

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

11.

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

Benjamin Franklin

12.

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

13.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means -- either may do -- the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

Franklin, Benjamin

14.

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.

Downs, Hugh

15.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself --it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Twain, Mark

16.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness

Orwell, George

17.

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

John Berry

18.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.

Young, Margaret

19.

There's a hope for every woe, and a balm for every pain, but the first joys of our heart come never back again!

Gilfillan, Robert

20.

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

21.

Some of us might find happiness if we quit struggling so desperately for it.

Feather, William

22.

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

Chuck Sigars

23.

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.

24.

Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.

W. Somerset Maugham

25.

The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

27.

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.

Porter, Jane

28.

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

29.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

Camus, Albert

30.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

31.

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

Johnson, Samuel

32.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

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

Dumas, Alexandre

34.

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things -- not the great occasions -- that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.

Hope, Bob

35.

No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he should be.

Tozer, A. W.

36.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Nicole Kidman

40.

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

41.

The happy think a lifetime short, but to the unhappy one night can be an eternity.

Lucian

42.

Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.

Lane, Rose Wilder

43.

The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick.

Swetchine, Anne Sophie

44.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

45.

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

46.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

47.

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

Saroyan, William

48.

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.

Barrie, Sir James M.

49.

Happiness is not so much in having or sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Macewan, Norman

50.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Johnson, Samuel