Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.

Chopra, Deepak

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

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

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation.

Freud, Sigmund

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

Storm Jameson

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

Yeats, William Butler

Happiness ain't a thing in itself --it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Twain, Mark

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

10.

My happiness derives from knowing the people I love are happy.

Ketchel, Holly

11.

Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart

12.

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

William Cowper

13.

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

Jean Houston

14.

The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

15.

Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts, while adversity is often as the rain of spring.

Proverb, Chinese

16.

The happier the moment the shorter.

Pliny The Elder

17.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

18.

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

19.

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

20.

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are. Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.

Baughan, R.J.

21.

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

22.

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

23.

The secret of happiness and prosperity in this world, as in the world to come, lies in thinking of the welfare of others first, and not taking one's self too seriously.

Kindleberger, J.

24.

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

25.

There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.

Brande, Dorothea

26.

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

Goodman, Roy

27.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

Jonathan Haidt

28.

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

29.

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

Huxley, Aldous

30.

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

31.

Not what you have, but what you see; Not what you see, but what you choose; Not what seems fair, but what is true; Not what you dream, but what you do; Not what you take, but what you give; Not as you pray, but as you live. These are the things that mar or bless The sum of human happiness.

32.

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

33.

Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Keller, Helen

34.

Gaiety --a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Diderot, Denis

35.

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

Dalai Lama

36.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

39.

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

40.

Happiness... she loves, to see men at work. She loves sweat, weariness, self sacrifice. She will be found not in places but lurking in cornfields and factories; and hovering over littered desks; she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child.

Grayson, David

41.

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

42.

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

Lao-Tzu

43.

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.

Porter, Jane

44.

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.

45.

In order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks. It's true these risks can put them in danger of being hurt.

Meg Cabot

46.

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

Socrates

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.

Carnegie, Dale

50.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus