Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

- Epictetus

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

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.

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

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert

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

Happiness is the longing for repetition.

Kundera, Milan

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

Jeans, Sir James

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

Schweitzer, Albert

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

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

10.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

11.

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

12.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

13.

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

Sarnoff, David

14.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

15.

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

James Oppenheim

16.

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

Yeats, William Butler

17.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

Epictetus

18.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Russell, Bertrand

19.

To buy happiness is to sell soul.

Horton, Doug

20.

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.

21.

The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.

Stein, Ben

22.

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

23.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

24.

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

Maurier, Daphne Du

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications are not your life.

J.K. Rowling

29.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

Lee, Bruce

30.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

Cervantes, Miguel De

31.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

32.

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

Smith, Adam

33.

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

34.

IÆve decided that the key to happiness is low expectations.

Laura Moncur

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.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Boone, Daniel

39.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Santayana, George

40.

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

Josh Billings

41.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

42.

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

43.

Where one is wise two are happy.

Proverb

44.

If you cannot renounce the world the genius of happiness will never salute you.

Prutz

45.

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

46.

It's not a question of happiness, it's a requirement. Consider the alternative.

Horton, Doug

47.

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

48.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.

Billings, Josh

49.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

50.

Happiness is a journey not a destination.

Sweetland, Ben