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 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

And isn't that, at it's core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? "Princess" is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. "Princess" is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconces in lace and innocence.

Peggy Orenstein

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.

Sondreal, Palmer

We wish to be happier than other people; and this is difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

Montesquieu, Charles De

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

Heywood, John

That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.

Waitley, Denis

Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it.

Proverb, Russian

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

Oliphant, Margaret

11.

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

Prutz

12.

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

Oprah Winfrey

13.

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

Watson, Lilian Eichler

14.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

Billings, Josh

15.

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

Prevert, Jacques

16.

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.

Levenson, Samuel

17.

The biggest lie on the planet: When I get what I want, I will be happy.

18.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.

Camus, Albert

19.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, Let no one be called happy till his death; to which I would add, Let no one, till his death be called unhappy.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

20.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

21.

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

22.

Happy were men if they but understood There is no safety but in doing good

Fountain., John

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Oscar Levant

26.

The really happy man never laughs -- seldom -- though he may smile. He does not need to laugh, for laughter, like weeping is a relief of mental tension -- and the happy are not over strung.

Aveling, Prof. F. A. P.

27.

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

Kennedy, John F.

28.

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

29.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Louise Bogan

30.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

31.

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.

32.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

33.

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

34.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Frost

35.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

36.

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

37.

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

Waitley, Denis

38.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

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

40.

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

Lucian

41.

Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

Rubinstein, Arthur

42.

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.

Doris Lessing

43.

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Barthel, Mildred

44.

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

45.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Hoffer, Eric

46.

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

Greene, Graham

47.

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

48.

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