Quotes about: happiness

It was a joy to be a part of the team that created Round The Horne. I was involved with the show at a time of my life when I was very happy., and that happiness overflowed into the scripts.
– Barry Took
Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.
– Thomas Traherne
More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.
– Thomas Traherne
To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to happiness.
– Thomas Traherne
It's good to follow the path of personal happiness to some extent. People tend to get upset however when you drive a steamroller down it.
– Simon Travaglia
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
– Mark Twain
So long as we can lose any happiness, we possess some.
– Booth Tarkington
Don't go for happiness, go for truth!
– Charles Tart
The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.
– Thucydides
Money doesn't bring happiness, though it has been known to cause an occasional smile.
– Herb True
God does not judge us by the multitude of works we perform, but how well we do the work that is ours to do. The happiness of too many days is often destroyed by trying to accomplish too much in one day. We would do well to follow a common rule for our daily lives - DO LESS, AND DO IT BETTER.
– Dale E. Turner
There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man - that is, the more divine - the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.
– Miguel de Unamuno
To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for.
– Henry Van Dyke
Happiness... it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
– Vincent van Gogh
Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.
– Bill Vaughn
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
It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit.
– Denis Waitley
Happiness is an inside job.
– William Arthur Ward
When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.
– Thornton Wilder
Liberty and happiness have a powerful enemy on each hand; on the one hand tyranny, on the other licentiousness [anarchy]. To guard against the latter, it is necessary to give the proper powers to government; and to guard against the former, it is necessary that those powers should be properly distributed.
– James Wilson
Happiness comes from... some curious adjustment to life.
– Hugh Walpole
Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination to be happy under all outward circumstances.
– J. Donald Walters
Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.
– J. Donald Walters
Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.
– J. Donald Walters
The secret of happiness is the determination to be happy always, rather than wait for outer circumstances to make one happy.
– J. Donald Walters
It is the personality of the mistress that the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how much happiness they may find there.
– Elsie de Wolfe
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
– William Butler Yeats
Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness.
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, what gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, the mind annihilates and calls for more.
– Andrew Young
What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money.
– Henny Youngman
There’s a miracle of friendship that
dwells within the heart
And you don’t know how it happens
or where it gets its start
But the happiness it brings you
always gives a special lift
Any you realize that friendship
Is God’s most perfect gift.
– Anonymous
Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.
– Anonymous
...happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it...
– Aristotle
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
– Thomas Gray
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
– Victor Hugo
For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swanlike sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
– Herman Melville
The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themseleves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest. Difficult tasks are a priviledge to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.
– Leo C. Rosten
Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.
– Sophocles
True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it 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.
– Joseph Addison
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
– Henri Frederic Amiel
Sometimes it's hard to avoid the happiness of others.
– David Assael
There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.
– Jane Austen
The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.
– Al Batt
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
– Lord William Beveridge
The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.
– Dr. Smiley Blanton
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
– Hobart Brown
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
– Pearl S. Buck
Cranes carry this heavy mystical baggage. They're icons of fidelity and happiness. The Vietnamese believe cranes cart our souls up to heaven on our wings.
– Mitchell Burgess
Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date.
– Dale Carnegie
O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, . . . I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
– William Cowper
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
If one speaks or acts with a cruel mind, misery follows, as the cart follows the horse... If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows, as a shadow follows its source.
– The Dhammapada
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
– Charles Dickens
A great obstacle to happiness is the expectation of too great a happiness.
– Fontenelle
Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination.
– Roy M. Goodman
Happiness just wasn't part of the job description back then. You tried to find a helpmate to keep the cold wind and dogs at bay. Happiness just wasn't part of the equation. Survival was.
– Robin Green
Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is.
– Elbert Hubbard
I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life, than on the nature of those events themselves.
– Wilhelm von Humboldt
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
– Aldous Huxley
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.
– Storm Jameson
But be, as you have been, my happiness...
– Randall Jarrell
The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.
– John F. Kennedy
When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.
– Nicole Kidman
Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness.
– Lao Tzu
Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance.
– The Laws of Manu
If you can attain repose and calm, believe that you have seized happiness.
– Julie-Jeanne-Eleonore de Lespinasse
I define comfort as self-acceptance. When we finally learn that self-care begins and ends with ourselves, we no longer demand sustenance and happiness from others.
– Jennifer Louden
Perhaps better we not obscure the idea that happiness and misery, kindness and greed, and good works and bad deeds are within the capacities of us all, not merely a select few.
– David P. Mikkelson
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
– James Oppenheim
Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.
– Norm Papernick
Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
– Laurence J. Peter
Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
– Alexander Pope
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
– Margaret Lee Runbeck
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
– Bertrand Russell
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
– Bertrand Russell
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
– Bertrand Russell
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
– George Santayana
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
– Albert Schweitzer
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
– George Bernard Shaw
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
– George Bernard Shaw
Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.
– George Sheehan
The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
– C. P. Snow
Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn
There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.
– Sophocles
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
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
– Henry David Thoreau
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
– US Declaration of Independence
There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
– Edith Wharton
There are three forces, the only three forces capable of conquering and enslaving forever the conscience of these weak rebels in the interests of their own happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and authority..
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Art never comes from happiness.
– Chuck Palahniuk
We have no scar to show from happiness. We learn so little from peace.
– Chuck Palahniuk
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
– Helen Keller
Your dear baby has died innocent and blameless, and has been called away by an all wise and merciful Creator, most probably from a life to misery and misfortune, and most certainly to one of happiness and bliss.
– George Mason
You take away all the other luxuries in life, and if you can make someone smile and laugh, you have given the most special gift: happiness.
– Brad Garrett
You need characters who want things. They want love, they want recognition, they want happiness.
– Candace Bushnell