Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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

Camus, Albert

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

The secret to happiness is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Richter, Jean Paul

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

Epictetus

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

Geneen, Harold S.

10.

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.

11.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

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

13.

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

Lao-tzu

14.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

15.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Wilde, Oscar

16.

Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation: know the nature of joy.

Upanishads, Veda

17.

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

Nash, Ogden

18.

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

Heywood, John

19.

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

Mill, John Stuart

20.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

21.

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

22.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

Billings, Josh

23.

Happiness is not pleasure, it is victory.

Ziglar, Zig

24.

Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of others.

Fielding, Henry

25.

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

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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

27.

Happiness consists in activity -- it is a running stream, not a stagnant pool.

Mason, John L.

28.

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation.

Freud, Sigmund

29.

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

Abraham Lincoln

30.

Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

Rubinstein, Arthur

31.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

32.

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

33.

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

Hoffer, Eric

34.

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.

Carnegie, Dale

35.

Happy were men if they but understood There is no safety but in doing good

Fountain., John

36.

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

37.

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

Saroyan, William

38.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

39.

Happiness is a journey not a destination.

Sweetland, Ben

40.

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger's gardens.

Jerrold, Douglas William

41.

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

42.

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

Confucius

43.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

44.

Not what you have, but what you see; Not what you see, but what you choose; Not what seems fair, but what is true; Not what you dream, but what you do; Not what you take, but what you give; Not as you pray, but as you live. These are the things that mar or bless The sum of human happiness.

45.

I've grown to realize the joy that comes from little victories is preferable to the fun that comes from ease and the pursuit of pleasure.

Lawana Blackwell

46.

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

47.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

48.

Gaiety --a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Diderot, Denis

49.

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

Buchan, John

50.

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

Sarnoff, David