Motivational Quotes

Happiness

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

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

Mill, John Stuart

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.

Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.

Socrates

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

Nicole Kidman

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

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

Bob Newhart

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle

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

Huxley, Aldous

10.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

Rohn, Jim

11.

And isn't that, at it's core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? "Princess" is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. "Princess" is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconces in lace and innocence.

Peggy Orenstein

12.

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

13.

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

Smith, Adam

14.

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

Lao-Tzu

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

19.

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

Clyde, R.D.

20.

Happiness doesn't come from doing what we like to do but from liking what we have to do.

Peterson, Wilferd A.

21.

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

Proverb, Scottish

22.

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

Boone, Daniel

23.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

24.

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

Stossel, John

25.

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

Socrates

26.

Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.

W. Somerset Maugham

27.

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

Landor, Walter Savage

28.

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

Kin Hubbard

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Happiness consists of three things; Someone to love, work to do, and a clear conscience.

32.

There's a hope for every woe, and a balm for every pain, but the first joys of our heart come never back again!

Gilfillan, Robert

33.

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

Billings, Josh

34.

Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.

Alcott, Louisa May

35.

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

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

Solon

37.

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

Horton, Doug

38.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

39.

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.

40.

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.

Jefferson, Thomas

41.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

42.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

Carlyle, Thomas

43.

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.

Hume, David

44.

Happiness adds and multiplies, as we divide it with others.

Nielsen, A.

45.

What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

46.

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

Rooney, Andy

47.

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.

48.

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

Robertson Davies

49.

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

Alda, Alan

50.

If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else.

Proverb, Chinese