Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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

Act happy, feel happy, be happy, without a reason in the world. Then you can love, and do what you will.

Millman, Dan

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

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

Landor, Walter Savage

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

Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

10.

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

11.

Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Keller, Helen

12.

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

Anderson, Greg

13.

Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.

Dewey, John

14.

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

15.

There is no happiness; there are only moments of happiness.

Proverb, Spanish

16.

The man who is born with a talent which he was meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.

Rooney, Andy

18.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

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

Cloete, Stuart

21.

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

22.

The world's literature and folklore are full of stories that point out how futile it can be to seek happiness. Rather, happiness is a blessing that comes to you as you go along; a treasure that you incidentally find.

Binstock, Louis

23.

The glow of satisfaction which follows the consciousness of doing our level best never comes to a human being from any other experience.

Marden, Orison Swett

24.

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

Buchan, John

25.

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

Kant, Immanuel

26.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

27.

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

Oscar Levant

28.

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

Zee, James Van Der

29.

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

Brande, Dorothea

30.

Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept.

Keyes Jr., Ken

31.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Spencer, Herbert

32.

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

33.

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.

Carnegie, Dale

34.

People who never achieve happiness are the ones who complain whenever they're awake, and whenever they're asleep, they are thinking about what to complain about tomorrow.

Zimbler, Adam

35.

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

Josh Billings

36.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Addison, Joseph

37.

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

Douglas, Norman

38.

Happiness is not in having being; it is in doing.

Watson, Lilian Eichler

39.

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

40.

Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose.

Stossel, John

41.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Aurelius, Marcus

42.

No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.

Muller, Max

43.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means -- either may do -- the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

Franklin, Benjamin

44.

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

Democritus

45.

Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and products of our creative and intellectual processes, enjoying the ecstasy of transcendent oneness with the universe.

Muriel, James

46.

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

Christopher Morley

47.

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

48.

The happy think a lifetime short, but to the unhappy one night can be an eternity.

Lucian

49.

Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living.

Ginott, Haim

50.

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

Aristotle