The happy should not insist too much upon their happiness in the presence of the unhappy.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Table-Talk
And happiness ... Well, after all, desires torment us, don't they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one ... What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it's been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign — the divine minus.
Happiness is sitting down to watch some slides of your neighbor's vacation and finding out that he spent two weeks in a nudist colony.
JOHNNY CARSON, Happiness Is a Dry Martini
We all seek happiness so eagerly, that in the pursuit we often lose that joyous sense of existence, and those quiet daily pleasures, the value of which our pride alone prevents us from acknowledging.
ARTHUR HELPS, Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Stranger in a Strange Land
Happy are those men who live without ambition, distrust, or disguise.
WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine
You have to fight to carve little pieces of happiness out of your life, or the everyday emergencies will eat up everything.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON, Cerulean Sins
Maybe you have to wait for happiness. Maybe the rest is only words.
ELLEN GILCHRIST, The Writing Life
Isn't it clear that bliss and envy--they are the numerator and the denominator of the fraction known as happiness.
The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.
DOUG LARSON, attributed, Touchstones: A Book of Daily Meditations for Men
Make cheer from your own heart, for the sun rises and sets according to your perspective on the universe.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, Dune: House Harkonnen
To be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes.
VIRGINIA WOOLF, To the Lighthouse
Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, You Learn by Living
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, letter to Madame Louise Colet, Aug. 13, 1846
There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. I think the whole premise is flawed. You're supposed to find true happiness outside of work. From friends, family, and YouTube videos of old people falling down.
CRAIG FERGUSON, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Mar. 1, 2012
A man may be happy anywhere that knows how to be contented.
WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine
And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more -- to learning. Always.
SYLVIA PLATH, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, The Garden of Eden
Happiness is being stuck in an elevator and discovering the ravishing blonde with you is a liquor salesman with a case of samples.
JOHNNY CARSON, Happiness Is a Dry Martini
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.
ANDRE GIDE, The Immoralist
My capacity for happiness ... you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.
DOUGLAS ADAMS, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Happy people die whole, they are all dissolved in a moment, they have had what they wanted.
ROBINSON JEFFERS, "Post Mortem"
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