Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Lao-tzu

Best Quotes about Happiness

There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.

Sivananda, Sri Swami

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

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

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation: know the nature of joy.

Upanishads, Veda

The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement.

Nash, Fay B.

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

10.

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

Bentham, Jeremy

11.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Russell, Bertrand

16.

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

17.

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

Camus, Albert

18.

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

Rooney, Andy

19.

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

Proverb, Spanish

20.

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

21.

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

Bono, Edward De

22.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi

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.

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

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

25.

Like swimming, riding, writing, or playing golf, happiness can be learned.

Sokoloff, Boris

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Freud, Sigmund

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Abraham Lincoln

32.

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

33.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.

Angelis, Barbara De

34.

Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.

35.

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

36.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

Lee, Bruce

37.

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

Solon

38.

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

Greene, Graham

39.

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

40.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

41.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

Rockefeller, John D.

42.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Alda, Alan

43.

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

Lucian

44.

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

C. P. Snow

45.

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

Brande, Dorothea

46.

Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult.

Ann Radcliffe

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.

Lane, Rose Wilder