Quotes about happiness

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

— Johann G. Fichte

To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve happiness.

— Johann G. Fichte

Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of others.

— Henry Fielding

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

— Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle

When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

— Malcolm S. Forbes

Happy were men if they but understood There is no safety but in doing good

— John Fountain.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

— Anne Frank

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means -- either may do -- the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

— Benjamin Franklin

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.

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Sigmund Freud

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

— Robert Frost

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

— Mahatma Gandhi

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.

— John W. Gardner

The hardest habit of all to break is the terrible habit of happiness.

— Theodosia Garrison

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

— Harold S. Geneen

There's a hope for every woe, and a balm for every pain, but the first joys of our heart come never back again!

— Robert Gilfillan

Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living.

— Haim Ginott

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The man who is born with a talent which he was meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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.

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Roy Goodman

Happiness... she loves, to see men at work. She loves sweat, weariness, self sacrifice. She will be found not in places but lurking in cornfields and factories; and hovering over littered desks; she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child.

— David Grayson

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

— Graham Greene

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower-Author Unknown People need your love the most when they appear to deserve it the least.

— John Harrigan

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

— William Hazlitt

If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.

— Gabriel Heatter

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.

— Robert Heinlein

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

— Hermann Hesse

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

— John Heywood

Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.

— Burton Hills

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

— Eric Hoffer

Happiness requires problems

— H. L. Hollingworth

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things -- not the great occasions -- that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.

— Bob Hope

You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.

— Horace

To buy happiness is to sell soul.

— Doug Horton

It's not a question of happiness, it's a requirement. Consider the alternative.

— Doug Horton

Happiness in the present is only shattered by comparison with the past.

— Doug Horton

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.

— Vernon Howard

The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is love, laughter, and work.

— Elbert Hubbard

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

— Kin Hubbard

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.

— Victor Hugo

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.

— Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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.

— David Hume

Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition. composition.

— David Hume

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

— Aldous Huxley

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

— Robert Green Ingersoll

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

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Those who seek happiness miss it, and those who discuss it, lack it.

— Holbrook Jackson

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.

— William James

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.

— Sir James Jeans

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

— Thomas Jefferson

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Douglas William Jerrold

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

— Samuel Johnson

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

— Samuel Johnson

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

For who is pleased with himself.

— Samuel Johnson

If you can't be happy where you are, it's a cinch you can't be happy where you ain't.

— Charles ''Tremendous'' Jones

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

— Ben Jonson

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

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

— Franz Kafka

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy

— Immanuel Kant

Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

— Helen Keller

True happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.

— John F. Kennedy

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

— Holly Ketchel

Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept.

— Ken Keyes Jr.

The secret of happiness and prosperity in this world, as in the world to come, lies in thinking of the welfare of others first, and not taking one's self too seriously.

— J. Kindleberger

I'm fulfilled in what I do... I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes -- the finer things of life -- would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.

— Coretta Scott King

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.

— Charles Kingsley

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.

— Frederick Koenig

Happiness is the longing for repetition.

— Milan Kundera

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

— Letitia Elizabeth Landon

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.

— Rose Wilder Lane

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

— Lao-Tzu

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

— Bruce Lee

Many search for happiness as we look for a hat we wear on our heads.

— Nikolaus Lenus

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone that can make anyone happy or miserable.

— Sir Roger L'Estrange

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

— Oscar Levant

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.

— Samuel Levenson

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

— C. S. Lewis

A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Sir John Lubbock

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

— E. V. Lucas

The happy think a lifetime short, but to the unhappy one night can be an eternity.

— Lucian

Happiness is not so much in having or sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

— Norman Macewan

Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.

— Orison Swett Marden