Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

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

Democritus

Happiness is not pleasure, it is victory.

Ziglar, Zig

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness... is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase the pursuit of happiness is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

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

Waitley, Denis

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Russell, Bertrand

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

Epicurus

10.

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

Proverb, Scottish

11.

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

12.

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

Koenig, Frederick

13.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

David Nicholls

14.

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

Prutz

15.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

16.

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again -- this is the brave and happy life.

Buckrose, J.E

17.

Happiness adds and multiplies, as we divide it with others.

Nielsen, A.

18.

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

Bono, Edward De

19.

Sometimes it's hard to avoid the happiness of others.

David Assael

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.

Solon

23.

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

Proust, Marcel

24.

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.

25.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Dalai Lama

26.

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

Aristotle

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Abraham Lincoln

31.

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

Fielding, Henry

32.

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

Stossel, John

33.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

Storm Jameson

34.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

C. P. Snow

35.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

36.

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.

Barrie, Sir James M.

37.

IÆve decided that the key to happiness is low expectations.

Laura Moncur

38.

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

39.

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.

Strindberg, J. August

40.

Happiness is a by product of an effort to make someone else happy.

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

41.

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

42.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

Rohn, Jim

43.

Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty to be happy. So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers.

Bonnell, John S.

44.

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

Lucas, E. V.

45.

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

Yeats, William Butler

46.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

Kafka, Franz

47.

To buy happiness is to sell soul.