Motivational Quotes

Happiness

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.

- Prevert, Jacques

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

My happiness derives from knowing the people I love are happy.

Ketchel, Holly

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

Happiness is a hard thing because it is achieved only by making others happy.

Cloete, Stuart

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

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

Nash, Ogden

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

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

Rockefeller, John D.

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

Schachtel, Rabbi H.

10.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Addison, Joseph

11.

Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

Rubinstein, Arthur

12.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

O'Malley, Austin

13.

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.

Democritus

14.

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

15.

Happiness is not a reward -- it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment -- it is a result.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

16.

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

17.

I've grown to realize the joy that comes from little victories is preferable to the fun that comes from ease and the pursuit of pleasure.

Lawana Blackwell

18.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

19.

Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.

Rooney, Andy

20.

Happiness lies first of all in health.

Curtis, George William

21.

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

Richter, Jean Paul

22.

The secret to happiness is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do.

23.

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing Double Dahlias in his garden.

Wolfe, W, Beran

24.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

25.

Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.

Chopra, Deepak

26.

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

Lao-Tzu

27.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

28.

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

Bono, Edward De

29.

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

30.

Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from a Heaven, at our very door

Edwards, Tryon

31.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.

Camus, Albert

32.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

33.

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

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

34.

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

Maurier, Daphne Du

35.

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

36.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

Burroughs, John

37.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

38.

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

Hoffer, Eric

39.

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

40.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Alda, Alan

41.

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

42.

We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

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

44.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

45.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

46.

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

47.

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