Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Happiness is a sort of action.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Happiness

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

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are able to inspire.

Prazlin, Duchess

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

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

Jefferson, Thomas

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.

Hume, David

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

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

The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.

Stein, Ben

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.

Goldsmith, Oliver

10.

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

Johnson, Samuel

11.

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

Zee, James Van Der

12.

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

George Burns

13.

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

Smith, Adam

14.

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

15.

If you pursue happiness you never find it.

Snow, C(harles) P(ercy)

16.

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

Roy M. Goodman

17.

In order to have great happiness, you have to have great pain and unhappiness-otherwise how would you know when you're happy?

Caron, Leslie

18.

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

19.

The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick.

Swetchine, Anne Sophie

20.

Happiness is activity.

Aristotle

21.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

22.

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

23.

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger's gardens.

Jerrold, Douglas William

24.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Maurier, Daphne Du

25.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

Epictetus

26.

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

Oppenheimer, Julius Robert

27.

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

28.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness

Orwell, George

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Bentham, Jeremy

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and products of our creative and intellectual processes, enjoying the ecstasy of transcendent oneness with the universe.

Muriel, James

36.

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

Storm Jameson

37.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Sade, Marquis De

38.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

39.

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.

40.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness -- It's growth -- mental, financial, you name it.

Geneen, Harold S.

42.

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

Bergson, Henri L.

43.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle

44.

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

45.

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

Jean Jacques Rousseau

46.

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

47.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

48.

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

Koenig, Frederick

49.

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

Robert Frost

50.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil --or else an absolute ignorance.

Greene, Graham