Motivational Quotes

Happiness

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

- Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Best Quotes about Happiness

Farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters -- where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives, as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.

Erikson, Erik H.

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

The secret of happiness and prosperity in this world, as in the world to come, lies in thinking of the welfare of others first, and not taking one's self too seriously.

Kindleberger, J.

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

Oprah Winfrey

We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

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

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Sade, Marquis De

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

10.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

11.

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

12.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

13.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

14.

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.

Prevert, Jacques

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

18.

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

Buchan, John

19.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

Camus, Albert

20.

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

Maurier, Daphne Du

21.

The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

22.

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness -- the sense that is where we really belong.

Greene, Graham

23.

Happiness is not pleasure, it is victory.

Ziglar, Zig

24.

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

Stossel, John

25.

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

26.

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

Christopher Morley

27.

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

28.

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

29.

When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.

Goodman, Roy

33.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

34.

Never believe straight off in a man's unhappiness. Ask him if he can still sleep. If the answer's yes, all's well. That is enough.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

35.

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

36.

Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance.

The laws of Manu

37.

Happiness is not a reward -- it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment -- it is a result.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

38.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.

Camus, Albert

39.

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

Jean Houston

40.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

42.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

43.

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

44.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.

Young, Margaret

45.

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.

Marden, Orison Swett

46.

Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.

Proverb, Scottish

47.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

Johnson, Samuel

48.

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

Yeats, William Butler

49.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Thoreau, Henry David

50.

We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.

Boyd, William