Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Ayn Rand

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Saroyan, William

Farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters -- where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives, as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.

Erikson, Erik H.

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

Oprah Winfrey

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

Abraham Lincoln

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

Huxley, Aldous

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

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

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

10.

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

Rockefeller, John D.

11.

A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Lincoln, Abraham

12.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

13.

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

14.

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Barthel, Mildred

15.

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

Landor, Walter Savage

16.

After what we can say you can be sure the happy heart will make the happy day.

17.

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

Proverb, Chinese

18.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

19.

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

John Berry

20.

There is no happiness; there are only moments of happiness.

Proverb, Spanish

21.

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

22.

In order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks. It's true these risks can put them in danger of being hurt.

Meg Cabot

23.

If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; If you want to be happy for life, plant a tree.

Proverb, English

24.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

25.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

26.

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

Hesse, Hermann

27.

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.

Sondreal, Palmer

28.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

29.

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

30.

For who is pleased with himself.

Johnson, Samuel

31.

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

Greene, Graham

32.

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.

Jeans, Sir James

33.

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

34.

Sometimes it's hard to avoid the happiness of others.

David Assael

35.

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Szasz, Thomas

36.

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Kin Hubbard

37.

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

38.

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

Boone, Daniel

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

Yeats, William Butler

42.

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

43.

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

44.

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.

Maslow, Abraham H.

45.

There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.

Brande, Dorothea

46.

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

Camus, Albert

47.

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

48.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

49.

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

Smith, Adam

50.

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