Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

- Thomas Szasz

Best Quotes about Happiness

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

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

Sokoloff, Boris

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower-Author Unknown People need your love the most when they appear to deserve it the least.

Harrigan, John

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

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

Epicurus

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

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

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

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

Proverb, Chinese

10.

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

Nicole Kidman

11.

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

Alcott, Louisa May

12.

We take greater pains to persuade others we are happy than in trying to think so ourselves.

Confucius

13.

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.

Levenson, Samuel

14.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Stendhal, Henri B.

15.

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want, and killing ourselves to get it.

Herold, Don

16.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Frost

17.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

19.

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

Keyes Jr., Ken

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden.

Wolfe, W, Beran

22.

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

Proverb, Scottish

23.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

24.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

C. P. Snow

25.

It's not a question of happiness, it's a requirement. Consider the alternative.

Horton, Doug

26.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

27.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Aurelius, Marcus

28.

For who is pleased with himself.

Johnson, Samuel

29.

Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.

Sarnoff, David

30.

Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.

Benjamin Franklin

31.

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

Upanishads, Veda

32.

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Russell, Bertrand

33.

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

34.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

35.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Freud, Sigmund

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

43.

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.

44.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications are not your life.

J.K. Rowling

45.

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

Billings, Josh

46.

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.

47.

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.