Motivational Quotes

Happiness

If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.

- Heatter, Gabriel

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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.

We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.

Landor, Walter Savage

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

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

Bono, Edward De

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

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Jung, Carl

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

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

10.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil --or else an absolute ignorance.

Greene, Graham

11.

Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.

W. Somerset Maugham

12.

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

13.

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

14.

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation.

Freud, Sigmund

15.

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

16.

All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!

Bob Newhart

17.

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

18.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Santayana, George

19.

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

20.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns

21.

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

Kennedy, John F.

22.

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Thomas Szasz

23.

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

Kant, Immanuel

24.

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.

Porter, Jane

25.

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

Chuck Sigars

26.

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

27.

Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

Franklin, Benjamin

28.

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

Stein, Ben

29.

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

30.

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

Oprah Winfrey

31.

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

Johnson, Samuel

32.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

33.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Stendhal, Henri B.

34.

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

Waitley, Denis

35.

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

Epictetus

36.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

37.

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

38.

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

Montesquieu, Charles De

39.

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of unhappiness.

Lao-Tzu

40.

Joy comes from using your potential.

Schultz, Will

41.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

42.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself --it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Twain, Mark

43.

Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.

Traherne, Thomas

44.

But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Baruch Spinoza

46.

Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.

Peale, Norman Vincent

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

Socrates

50.

If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.

Heatter, Gabriel