Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Chuck Sigars

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Hesse, Hermann

It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit.

Waitley, Denis

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Stendhal, Henri B.

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

Happiness is a hard thing because it is achieved only by making others happy.

Cloete, Stuart

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

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

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

10.

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

Boone, Daniel

11.

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

Rubinstein, Arthur

12.

Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.

13.

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

Oprah Winfrey

14.

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

Lucas, E. V.

15.

In order to be truly happy, you must live along with, and you must stand for something larger than yourself.

Oprah Winfrey

16.

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden.

Wolfe, W, Beran

17.

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

18.

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

Ketchel, Holly

19.

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

Maxwell, William

20.

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

21.

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us so live as to deserve happiness.

Fichte, Johann G.

22.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

23.

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

24.

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

Zee, James Van Der

25.

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

26.

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

James Oppenheim

27.

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

Buchan, John

28.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

O'Malley, Austin

29.

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

Josh Billings

30.

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

31.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

33.

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

Fielding, Henry

34.

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.

35.

The happier the moment the shorter.

Pliny The Elder

36.

Happiness comes from... some curious adjustment to life.

Walpole, Sir Hugh

37.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Dumas, Alexandre

38.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

David Nicholls

39.

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want, and killing ourselves to get it.

Herold, Don

40.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness

Orwell, George

41.

Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower, and draws all good things toward you. Allow your love to nourish yourself as well as others. Do not strain after the needs of life. It is sufficient to be quietly alert and aware of them. In this way life proceeds more naturally and effortlessly. Life is here to Enjoy!

Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh

42.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

Proust, Marcel

43.

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

Russell, Bertrand

44.

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.

Rubin, Theodore I.

45.

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

46.

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Kingsley, Charles

47.

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

48.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

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

50.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth