Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Lao-Tzu

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.

Horace

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

Dalai Lama

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

Walters, J. Donald

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

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

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

Fielding, Henry

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Watson, Lilian Eichler

10.

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a life time.

11.

Happiness is the act of being tough with ourselves and tender with others.

12.

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

Bergson, Henri L.

13.

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

14.

The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is love, laughter, and work.

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

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.

16.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Wilde, Oscar

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Heywood, John

20.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

Carlyle, Thomas

21.

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

Nash, Ogden

22.

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

23.

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

Alda, Alan

24.

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

25.

Not what you have, but what you see; Not what you see, but what you choose; Not what seems fair, but what is true; Not what you dream, but what you do; Not what you take, but what you give; Not as you pray, but as you live. These are the things that mar or bless The sum of human happiness.

26.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

O'Malley, Austin

27.

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

Bennett, Arnold

28.

After what we can say you can be sure the happy heart will make the happy day.

29.

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

Nielsen, A.

30.

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

31.

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

32.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Spencer, Herbert

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Epicurus

37.

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

38.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

39.

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

40.

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

Chuck Sigars

41.

Happiness comes from... some curious adjustment to life.

Walpole, Sir Hugh

42.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

Epicurus

43.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

44.

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

Oliphant, Margaret

45.

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

Sokoloff, Boris

46.

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

47.

I'm fulfilled in what I do... I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes -- the finer things of life -- would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.

King, Coretta Scott

48.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

49.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness

Orwell, George

50.

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