Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Muller, Max

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

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

Saroyan, William

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

Epicurus

Act happy, feel happy, be happy, without a reason in the world. Then you can love, and do what you will.

Millman, Dan

Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

Josh Billings

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

A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Lincoln, Abraham

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

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 smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

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

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.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

14.

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

15.

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

Alda, Alan

16.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meandering, but leads none of us by the same route

Colton, Charles Caleb

17.

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

Sokoloff, Boris

18.

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

19.

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

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

22.

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

23.

To buy happiness is to sell soul.

Horton, Doug

24.

Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

25.

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

Montesquieu, Charles De

26.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.

Camus, Albert

27.

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

28.

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

Kin Hubbard

29.

Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

Franklin, Benjamin

30.

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

31.

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

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert

32.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

33.

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

Roy M. Goodman

34.

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

35.

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

Oscar Levant

36.

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

Thomas Szasz

37.

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

38.

Those who seek happiness miss it, and those who discuss it, lack it.

Jackson, Holbrook

39.

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

Ann Radcliffe

40.

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

Lao-Tzu

41.

Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.

Benjamin Franklin

42.

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

43.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Jung, Carl

44.

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

45.

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

Boone, Daniel

46.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Baruch Spinoza

47.

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

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.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

50.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle