Motivational Quotes

Happiness

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

- William Cowper

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Confucius

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

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.

I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace - a connection to what matters.

Oprah Winfrey

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

Kennedy, John F.

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

Heywood, John

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

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

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.

James, William

10.

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

11.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

Kafka, Franz

12.

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

13.

The secret of happiness and prosperity in this world, as in the world to come, lies in thinking of the welfare of others first, and not taking one's self too seriously.

Kindleberger, J.

14.

Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.

Socrates

15.

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

16.

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

Camus, Albert

17.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Alda, Alan

18.

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

Fountain., John

19.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

La Bruyere, Jean De

20.

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

21.

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

Douglas, Norman

22.

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

Anderson, Greg

23.

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

Maxwell, William

24.

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

Bennett, Arnold

25.

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

Benjamin Franklin

26.

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.

Goldsmith, Oliver

27.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

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

29.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

Rockefeller, John D.

30.

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.

31.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

32.

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

33.

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

Al Batt

34.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

35.

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

36.

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

37.

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

Nash, Ogden

38.

Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

39.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meandering, but leads none of us by the same route

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

Socrates

41.

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.

Prevert, Jacques

42.

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

43.

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

Watson, Lilian Eichler

44.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

45.

The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is love, laughter, and work.

Hubbard, Elbert

46.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

Shaw, George Bernard

47.

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

48.

Happiness is the act of being tough with ourselves and tender with others.

49.

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

50.

Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it.

Proverb, Russian