Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Abraham Lincoln

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

Happiness is not pleasure, it is victory.

Ziglar, Zig

The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool. Yet people sometimes do just this. They work hard at a task and expect some special euphoria at the end. But when they achieve success and find only moderate and short-lived pleasure, they ask is that all there is? They devalue their accomplishments as a striving after wind. We can call this the progress principle: Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them.

Jonathan Haidt

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Proust, Marcel

If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.

Heatter, Gabriel

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

Huxley, Aldous

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

Jean Houston

10.

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

11.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Dumas, Alexandre

12.

Happiness in the present is only shattered by comparison with the past.

Horton, Doug

13.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Aurelius, Marcus

14.

To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve happiness.

Fichte, Johann G.

15.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; The wise grows it under his feet.

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert

16.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Addison, Joseph

17.

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

Smith, Adam

18.

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

19.

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden.

Wolfe, W, Beran

20.

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

Proverb, Scottish

21.

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Enjoy your happiness while you have it, and while, you have it do not too closely scrutinize its foundation.

Farrall, Joseph

25.

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

26.

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

Fielding, Henry

27.

Happiness is perfume, you can't pour it on somebody else without getting a few drops on yourself

Zee, James Van Der

28.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

29.

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

30.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Ayn Rand

31.

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

Oliphant, Margaret

32.

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

33.

The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

34.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

William Cowper

35.

In order to have great happiness, you have to have great pain and unhappiness-otherwise how would you know when you're happy?

Caron, Leslie

36.

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

Dalai Lama

37.

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

Sarnoff, David

38.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

39.

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

The laws of Manu

40.

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

41.

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

Rockefeller, John D.

42.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

43.

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

Mahatma Gandhi

44.

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Kin Hubbard

45.

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

Upanishads, Veda

46.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

47.

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

David Assael

48.

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

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.

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

Democritus