Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

Best Quotes about Happiness

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

Oscar Levant

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.

Billings, Josh

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

Proverb, Spanish

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

James Oppenheim

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

Never believe straight off in a man's unhappiness. Ask him if he can still sleep. If the answer's yes, all's well. That is enough.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

Bergson, Henri L.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

10.

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

Robert Frost

11.

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

12.

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

Walters, J. Donald

13.

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

Goodman, Roy

14.

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.

Murdoch, Iris

15.

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier

16.

This is the best kind of voyeurism, hearing joy from your neighbors.

Chuck Sigars

17.

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a life time.

18.

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

19.

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

Walpole, Sir Hugh

20.

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

Kin Hubbard

21.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

22.

Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.

Josh Billings

23.

What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement.

Nash, Fay B.

24.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

25.

The thing that counts most in the pursuit of happiness is choosing the right companion.

26.

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

27.

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

28.

Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living.

Ginott, Haim

29.

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

Eddie Cantor

30.

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

Douglas, Norman

31.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.

Camus, Albert

32.

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

33.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

34.

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

35.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

Cervantes, Miguel De

36.

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

Hesse, Hermann

37.

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

Lucas, E. V.

38.

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

Heywood, John

39.

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

Dalai Lama

40.

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.

41.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

Meredith, Owen

42.

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

Byron, Lord

43.

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

William Cowper

44.

When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

45.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

46.

To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve happiness.

Fichte, Johann G.

47.

Happiness seems made to be shared.

Corneille, Pierre

48.

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

49.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Wilde, Oscar

50.

True happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.

Kennedy, John F.