A Collection of Quotes About Happiness
I hate being happy. It pisses me off. Because I know if I try to grab it, it will slip away, like one of those goddamn water snakes. And I hate just looking. I always try to grab. ~D.H. Mondfleur
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ~Mahatma Gandhi
When you’re really happy, the birds chirp and the sun shines even on cold dark winter nights – and flowers will bloom on a barren land. ~Grey Livingston
It is a comely fashion to be glad; Joy is the grace we say to God. ~Jean Ingelow
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, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. ~W. Beran Wolfe
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. ~ Charles Kingsley
The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount. ~ Joseph Addison
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~ Albert Camus
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drowned your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. ~ Steve Jobs
Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it. ~ David Lee Roth
Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. ~ Spike Milligan
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. ~ Omar Khayyam
Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don’t find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings YOU the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run. ~ David Leonhardt
Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. ~ Og Mandino
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. ~ Aristotle
Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled. ~ Dr. Benjamin Spock
There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it. ~ Groucho Marx
Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. ~Jacques Prévert
If you want to be happy, be. ~Leo Tolstoy
Remember, happiness doesn’t depend on who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think. ~ Dale Carnegie
Happiness is never stopping to think if you are. ~Palmer Sondreal
Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy. ~Robert Anthony
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. ~ Albert Camus
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. ~ Albert Schweitzer
I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. ~ Albert Schweitzer
Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them. ~ Jack Brown
Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve. ~Robert S. Lynd
I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. ~ Abd-El-Raham
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright. ~ Walter Benjamin
The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it. ~ C.P. Snow
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. ~ Albert Schweitzer
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. ~ Alexandre Dumas
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. ~Robert Frost
People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you’re fortunate. But happiness is a result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. ~ Author Unknown
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. ~ Margaret Lee Runbeck
Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one’s own way to the highest, to one’s own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one’s ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication. ~ Algernon Black
The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. ~ Allan K. Chalmers
Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good. ~ Amy Lowell
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. ~Epictetus
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ~ Freya Stark
Gather the crumbs of happiness and they will make you a loaf of contentment. ~Author Unknown
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not. ~George Bernard Shaw
Happiness is the natural flower of duty. ~Phillips Brooks
We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. ~ Anne Frank
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. ~ Anne Frank
For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. ~Author Unknown
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. ~Mildred Barthel
[U]sefulness is happiness, and… all other things are but incidental. ~Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, 1829
Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient. ~ Aristotle
What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness. Baruch Spinoza
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live. ~ Bertrand Russell
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. ~J.D. Salinger
Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust
Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others. ~ Buddha
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~ Buddha
The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase, if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it. ~ C. P. Snow
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~ Albert Camus
Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other. ~Norman Bradburn
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. ~Josh Billings
Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it. ~William Feather
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. ~ Carl Jung
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. ~ Carl Jung
My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right? ~ Charles Schulz
The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration. ~ Claude Monet
Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more. ~ David Steindl-Rast
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. ~ Denis Waitley
For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time. ~ Edith Wharton
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations. ~ Edward de Bono
To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
Some pursue happiness, others create it. ~ Author Unknown
The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy. ~ Eric Hoffer
The truth which has made us free will in the end make us glad also. ~ Felix Adler
Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you. ~ Fran Leibowitz
The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure. ~ Francoise de Motteville
Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. ~ George Burns
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. ~ George Sand
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. ~ Helen Keller
Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. ~ Helen Keller
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves. ~ Helen Keller
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest. ~ Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this? ~ Henry David Thoreau
All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within. ~ Horace Friess
Here we are the way politics ought to be in America; the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose and the politics of joy. ~
Hubert H. Humphrey
Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves. ~ James M. Barrie
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet. ~ James Oppenheim:
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open. ~ John Barrymore
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure. ~ John D. Rockefeller
The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. ~ John Milton:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
~ Kalidasa
It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty an’ wealth have both failed. ~ Kin Hubbard
What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life. ~ Leo Buscaglia
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. ~ M. Scott Peck
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~ Marcel Proust
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis. ~ Margaret Bonnano
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. ~ Robertson Davies
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination. ~ Mark Twain
Happiness is a Swedish sunset — it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it. ~ Mark Twain
Whoever is happy will make others happy, too. ~ Mark Twain
The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people. ~ Mark Twain
The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances. ~ Martha Washington
Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. ~ Norman MacEwan
The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things is of rather low quality on the whole and less even in quantity than it looks to those who have not tried it. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Growth itself contains the germ of happiness. ~ Pearl S. Buck
Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame — or one that is conducive to loving-kindness. ~ Pema Chodron
There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else. ~ Peyton Conway March
To fill the hour — that is happiness. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within. ~ Ramona L. Anderson
Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~ Robert Heinlein
There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world. Robert Louis Stevenson
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness. ~ Sophocles
Independence is happiness. ~ Susan B. Anthony
When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama:Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
Happiness, it seems to me, consists of two things: first, in being where you belong, and second — and best — in comfortably going through everyday life, that is, having had a good night’s sleep and not being hurt by new shoes. ~ Theodor Fontane:
The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family. ~ Thomas Jefferson
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. ~ Thomas Jefferson
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. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. ~ W. Beran Wolfe
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great. ~ Willa Cather
