Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Happiness is not in having being; it is in doing.

- Watson, Lilian Eichler

Best Quotes about Happiness

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

Black, Hugo

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

Nash, Ogden

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

Chuck Sigars

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

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

Joy comes from using your potential.

Schultz, Will

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

Smith, Adam

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

Billings, Josh

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

10.

If you can't be happy where you are, it's a cinch you can't be happy where you ain't.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

11.

But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.

Carlyle, Thomas

12.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.

Angelis, Barbara De

13.

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

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.

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

James Oppenheim

16.

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

Johnson, Samuel

17.

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

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

18.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

19.

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

20.

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

Lucas, E. V.

22.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns

23.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

Mill, John Stuart

24.

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

25.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

Kafka, Franz

26.

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

Lao-tzu

27.

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

28.

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

Rockefeller, John D.

29.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

30.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

Publilius Syrus

31.

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

Oliphant, Margaret

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Happiness is perfume, you can't pour it on somebody else without getting a few drops on yourself

Zee, James Van Der

35.

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

Schweitzer, Albert

36.

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

37.

A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Lincoln, Abraham

38.

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

John Berry

39.

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

Jonathan Haidt

40.

Happiness is the act of being tough with ourselves and tender with others.

41.

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things -- not the great occasions -- that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.

Hope, Bob

42.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Addison, Joseph

43.

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

Huxley, Aldous

44.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

45.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

Proust, Marcel

46.

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

47.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

48.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meandering, but leads none of us by the same route

Colton, Charles Caleb

49.

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

50.

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