Motivational Quotes

Happiness

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are. Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.

- Baughan, R.J.

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Smith, Adam

But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.

Carlyle, Thomas

Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise.

Thomas, John M.

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

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

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

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

Brande, Dorothea

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

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

10.

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

Ingersoll, Robert Green

11.

Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination.

Roy M. Goodman

12.

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

13.

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.

Murdoch, Iris

14.

IÆve decided that the key to happiness is low expectations.

Laura Moncur

15.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

16.

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

Wilde, Oscar

17.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

18.

Happiness is perfume, you can't pour it on somebody else without getting a few drops on yourself

Zee, James Van Der

19.

Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

Josh Billings

20.

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

21.

Joy comes from using your potential.

Schultz, Will

22.

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

23.

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

Anderson, Greg

24.

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.

Strindberg, J. August

25.

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

John Berry

26.

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

27.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Schweitzer, Albert

28.

Happiness is a by product of an effort to make someone else happy.

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

29.

Happiness consists of three things; Someone to love, work to do, and a clear conscience.

30.

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

Maxwell, William

31.

Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!

Bradley, Amanda

32.

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

Nicole Kidman

33.

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

34.

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

35.

It is kind of happiness to know to what extent we may be unhappy.

36.

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

Rockefeller, John D.

37.

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

Rubinstein, Arthur

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

42.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

Storm Jameson

43.

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

Buchan, John

44.

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

45.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, Let no one be called happy till his death; to which I would add, Let no one, till his death be called unhappy.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

46.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

Meredith, Owen

47.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle

48.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

49.

Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.