Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

People who never achieve happiness are the ones who complain whenever they're awake, and whenever they're asleep, they are thinking about what to complain about tomorrow.

Zimbler, Adam

The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

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

Byron, Lord

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

10.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Louise Bogan

11.

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

12.

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

Heywood, John

13.

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

Montesquieu, Charles De

14.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

La Bruyere, Jean De

15.

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

16.

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

17.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Hoffer, Eric

18.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

Rockefeller, John D.

20.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

Johnson, Samuel

21.

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

Clyde, R.D.

22.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

Seneca

23.

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

24.

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

Beckett, Samuel

25.

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

26.

No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he should be.

Tozer, A. W.

27.

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

Proverb, Spanish

28.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

Waitley, Denis

29.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

30.

We wish to be happier than other people; and this is difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

Montesquieu, Charles De

31.

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

32.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Stendhal, Henri B.

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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

Lao-tzu

35.

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

36.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

37.

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

Socrates

38.

Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it.

Proverb, Russian

39.

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

40.

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

Anderson, Greg

41.

The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

42.

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

Nicole Kidman

43.

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

C. P. Snow

44.

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

45.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

46.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle

47.

For who is pleased with himself.

Johnson, Samuel

48.

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

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

49.

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

Stossel, John

50.

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