Motivational Quotes

Happiness

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

- Alcott, Louisa May

Best Quotes about Happiness

In order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks. It's true these risks can put them in danger of being hurt.

Meg Cabot

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Spencer, Herbert

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.

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

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

Upanishads, Veda

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

Freud, Sigmund

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

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

Boone, Daniel

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

C. P. Snow

10.

We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.

Landor, Walter Savage

11.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

12.

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

Nash, Ogden

13.

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

Chambers, Oswald

14.

Happiness requires problems

Hollingworth, H. L.

15.

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

16.

Not what you have, but what you see; Not what you see, but what you choose; Not what seems fair, but what is true; Not what you dream, but what you do; Not what you take, but what you give; Not as you pray, but as you live. These are the things that mar or bless The sum of human happiness.

17.

There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness... is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase the pursuit of happiness is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

18.

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

Heywood, John

19.

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

Meredith, Owen

20.

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

Dalai Lama

21.

After what we can say you can be sure the happy heart will make the happy day.

22.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

23.

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

24.

Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.

Bierce, Ambrose

25.

Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result. Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.

Heinlein, Robert

26.

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

27.

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.

Rubin, Theodore I.

28.

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

Lubbock, Sir John

29.

If you want to be happy for a year, plant a garden; If you want to be happy for life, plant a tree.

Proverb, English

30.

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

Addison, Joseph

31.

Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.

Maxwell, William

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Happiness is a sort of action.

Aristotle

35.

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

36.

Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

Bennett, William John

37.

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

Chuck Sigars

38.

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

Epictetus

39.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

40.

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