Motivational Quotes

Happiness

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

- Black, Hugo

Best Quotes about Happiness

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

Black, Hugo

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.

Joy comes from using your potential.

Schultz, Will

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

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.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else.

Proverb, Chinese

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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

12.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

13.

I'm fulfilled in what I do... I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes -- the finer things of life -- would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.

King, Coretta Scott

14.

Success is getting and achieving what you want. Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get.

Meltzer, Bernard

15.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

16.

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

Fielding, Henry

17.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

James Oppenheim

18.

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

19.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Addison, Joseph

20.

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

Upanishads, Veda

21.

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

Feather, William

22.

Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.

Walters, J. Donald

23.

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

Bentham, Jeremy

24.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

25.

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

Oliphant, Margaret

26.

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

Hesse, Hermann

27.

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

Kin Hubbard

28.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

29.

In order to have great happiness, you have to have great pain and unhappiness-otherwise how would you know when you're happy?

Caron, Leslie

30.

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

31.

Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance.

The laws of Manu

32.

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

33.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Thoreau, Henry David

34.

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

35.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

36.

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy

Kant, Immanuel

37.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

38.

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.

39.

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

Chuck Sigars

40.

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

Smith, Adam

41.

Happiness is good for the body but sorrow strengthens the spirit.

42.

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

43.

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Russell, Bertrand

44.

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

Nash, Ogden

45.

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

46.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

47.

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.

48.

My happiness derives from knowing the people I love are happy.

Ketchel, Holly

49.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

Epicurus

50.

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