Motivational Quotes

Happiness

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

- Proverb, Hasidic

Best Quotes about Happiness

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

Eddie Cantor

The glow of satisfaction which follows the consciousness of doing our level best never comes to a human being from any other experience.

Marden, Orison Swett

Happiness is not so much in having or sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Macewan, Norman

Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.

Anderson, Greg

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

Beckett, Samuel

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

Dyer, Wayne

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

10.

The greatest joy of life is to love and be loved.

Clyde, R.D.

11.

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

Shaw, George Bernard

15.

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

Abraham Lincoln

16.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Johnson, Samuel

17.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

18.

In order to be truly happy, you must live along with, and you must stand for something larger than yourself.

Oprah Winfrey

19.

It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit.

Waitley, Denis

20.

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

John Berry

21.

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.

Maslow, Abraham H.

22.

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

23.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

24.

The hardest habit of all to break is the terrible habit of happiness.

Garrison, Theodosia

25.

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

26.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

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

William Cowper

28.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

29.

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

Mahatma Gandhi

30.

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

Horace

31.

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

32.

Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept.

Keyes Jr., Ken

33.

I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace - a connection to what matters.

Oprah Winfrey

34.

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

35.

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

Sokoloff, Boris

36.

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

37.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

38.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Schweitzer, Albert

39.

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

The laws of Manu

40.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise.

Thomas, John M.

44.

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

45.

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

James Oppenheim

46.

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

Goodman, Roy

47.

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

48.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.