Happiness Quotes

I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.

William J. Locke

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.

Samuel Johnson

There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good life is to live.

Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

Joseph Addison

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, Mansfield Park

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.

H. L. Mencken

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.

Martha Washington

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Herman Cain

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self - Gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Kelle

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness it is generally the by - Product of other activities.

Aldous Huxley

We find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

Maxwell Maltz, Communication Bulletin for Managers & Supervisors, June 2004

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

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

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

Henry Ford

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

Horace

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, Antigone

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

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

George Bernard Shaw

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thomas Jefferson

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.

Antoine De Saint - Exupery

The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.

Al Batt, in National Enquire

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

If my heart can become pure and simple like that of a child, I think there probably can be no greater happiness than this.

Kitaro Nishida

I wish you all the good and charm that life can offer. Think of me kindly, and rest assured that no one would more rejoice to hear of your happiness.

Ludwig van Beethoven

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr.

When one door of happiness closes another opens; but we often look so long at the closed one that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

Helen Keller, Quote of the day book

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

Johann von Goethe

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Christian Nestell Bovee

Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.

George Sheehan

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

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

C. S. Lewis

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.

Theodore Isaac Rubin

Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.

Mary Cholmondeley

There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.

Pearl Buck

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

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Ernest Hemingway