Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Proust, Marcel

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

Hesse, Hermann

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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

Muller, Max

Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose.

Stossel, John

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

For who is pleased with himself.

Johnson, Samuel

What would you call the highest happiness? Wratislaw was ask. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.

Buchan, John

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Santayana, George

It is kind of happiness to know to what extent we may be unhappy.

10.

We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.

Landor, Walter Savage

11.

No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he should be.

Tozer, A. W.

12.

If you cannot renounce the world the genius of happiness will never salute you.

Prutz

13.

Where one is wise two are happy.

Proverb

14.

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness -- It's growth -- mental, financial, you name it.

Geneen, Harold S.

15.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

Lubbock, Sir John

16.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle

17.

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

18.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

Meredith, Owen

19.

Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.

Chopra, Deepak

20.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

21.

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

Dalai Lama

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Solon

25.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

Yeats, William Butler

26.

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

Camus, Albert

27.

The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what's there: all of it.

Rohr, Richard

28.

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

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

Byron, Lord

31.

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.

Jeans, Sir James

32.

True happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.

Kennedy, John F.

33.

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

34.

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

Jean Houston

35.

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

36.

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

Richter, Jean Paul

37.

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

38.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

39.

To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life slowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

Russell, Bertrand

40.

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again -- this is the brave and happy life.

Buckrose, J.E

41.

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

42.

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.

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

Huxley, Aldous

45.

The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.

Al Batt

46.

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

47.

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

Democritus

48.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

Storm Jameson

49.

Farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters -- where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives, as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.

Erikson, Erik H.

50.

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

Abraham Lincoln