Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Szasz, Thomas

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Sade, Marquis De

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

Oscar Levant

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

Rooney, Andy

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

Ann Radcliffe

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

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

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.

Murdoch, Iris

10.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

Saroyan, William

11.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Maurier, Daphne Du

13.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

14.

Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination.

Roy M. Goodman

15.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

16.

Happiness is good for the body but sorrow strengthens the spirit.

17.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

Waitley, Denis

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Happiness consists in activity -- it is a running stream, not a stagnant pool.

Mason, John L.

21.

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

22.

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

David Assael

23.

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.

Carnegie, Dale

24.

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

Prevert, Jacques

25.

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

Bergson, Henri L.

26.

Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.

Chopra, Deepak

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Happiness... she loves, to see men at work. She loves sweat, weariness, self sacrifice. She will be found not in places but lurking in cornfields and factories; and hovering over littered desks; she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child.

Grayson, David

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Where one is wise two are happy.

Proverb

33.

We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

34.

No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.

Muller, Max

35.

When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.

Nicole Kidman

36.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

37.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

Mill, John Stuart

38.

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

39.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

40.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world. Someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

Chalmers, Allan K.

42.

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.

43.

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

Boone, Daniel

44.

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

Freud, Sigmund

45.

Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Keller, Helen

46.

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us least live so as to deserve it.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

47.

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

48.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

49.

All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!

Bob Newhart

50.

If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; If you want to be happy for life, plant a tree.

Proverb, English