Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Cloete, Stuart

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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

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

Feather, William

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

10.

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

11.

Like swimming, riding, writing, or playing golf, happiness can be learned.

Sokoloff, Boris

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Kant, Immanuel

16.

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

17.

The biggest lie on the planet: When I get what I want, I will be happy.

18.

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

Fielding, Henry

19.

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

Chuck Sigars

20.

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

21.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

Johnson, Samuel

22.

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

Fichte, Johann G.

23.

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

Oprah Winfrey

24.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

25.

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.

Democritus

26.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

Jonathan Haidt

27.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

Lubbock, Sir John

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Maurier, Daphne Du

31.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

32.

Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it.

Proverb, Russian

33.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Louise Bogan

34.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

35.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

36.

The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

37.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

Seneca

38.

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

39.

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

Lucas, E. V.

40.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Santayana, George

41.

And isn't that, at it's core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? "Princess" is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. "Princess" is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconces in lace and innocence.

Peggy Orenstein

42.

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

43.

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

Kennedy, John F.

44.

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

Proust, Marcel

45.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

46.

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

Wilde, Oscar

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.

Joy comes from using your potential.

Schultz, Will

49.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

50.

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.