Motivational Quotes

Happiness

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Saroyan, William

There is no happiness; there are only moments of happiness.

Proverb, Spanish

Happiness comes from... some curious adjustment to life.

Walpole, Sir Hugh

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

Byron, Lord

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.

Aurelius, Marcus

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

10.

The world's literature and folklore are full of stories that point out how futile it can be to seek happiness. Rather, happiness is a blessing that comes to you as you go along; a treasure that you incidentally find.

Binstock, Louis

11.

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

12.

We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.

Boyd, William

13.

Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise.

Thomas, John M.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, Let no one be called happy till his death; to which I would add, Let no one, till his death be called unhappy.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

18.

If you're ever given the choice between happiness and intelligence choose happiness

19.

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

20.

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

Epicurus

21.

Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation: know the nature of joy.

Upanishads, Veda

22.

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Barthel, Mildred

23.

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

Rooney, Andy

24.

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

John Berry

25.

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.

26.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil --or else an absolute ignorance.

Greene, Graham

27.

Happiness is a by product of an effort to make someone else happy.

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

28.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

29.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

30.

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.

Doris Lessing

31.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Chuang Tzu

32.

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.

33.

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are able to inspire.

Prazlin, Duchess

34.

Enjoy your happiness while you have it, and while, you have it do not too closely scrutinize its foundation.

Farrall, Joseph

35.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

36.

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

37.

Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.

Walters, J. Donald

38.

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

39.

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

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

45.

Happiness is not a reward -- it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment -- it is a result.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

46.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

47.

The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.