quotations about Happiness
What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Heart of the Matter
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people.... Conflicts in relationships--having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse--is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
You've got to be responsible for your own happiness -- you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
Past happiness augments present wretchedness.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Notebooks, Aug. 16, 1916
Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.
MAXIM GORKY
attributed, Know Your Limits
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Who would dare speak the word "happiness" in these tortured times? Yet millions today continue to seek happiness. These years have been for them only a prolonged postponement, at the end of which they hope to find that the possibility for happiness has been renewed. Who could blame them? And who could say that they are wrong? What would justice be without the chance for happiness? What purpose would freedom serve, if we had to live in misery?
ALBERT CAMUS
Combat, Dec. 22, 1944
Happiness does not depend upon surroundings, but upon disposition.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
All that you ever wanted and that which you will ever want is within your reachable happiness radius.
STEVE NYAMBE
"Don't worry, happiness is yours to achieve", NewsDay, June 30, 2018
Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Gold, gold! It may not buy happiness, but it can buy you a better state of misery, that's for sure!
COUNT DUCKULA
"Ghostly Gold", Count Duckula
Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
The most damaging erroneous belief about happiness is, of course, that happiness is somewhere else--that is, that it is not with you.
ROBERT HOLDEN
Happiness Now: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. Acceptance is the key to everything.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Esquire, Dec. 2007
Happiness is German engineering, Italian cooking, and Belgian chocolate.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
Moon Called
Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to John Page, Jul. 15, 1763