HAPPINESS QUOTES VII

quotations about Happiness

I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Mosquitoes


Happiness is not the end result of attaining success, fame or wealth it is the inner joy you experience when you love your work journey, it's here in present moment when you fall in love with the process.

ANKIT SHENDE

Happiness Is Not For Sale


Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

ARNOLD BENNETT

Self and Self-Management

Tags: Arnold Bennett


That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continu'st such, owe to thy self,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.

JOHN MILTON

Paradise Lost


You have never seen ugliness in a happy face.

WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE

The Beloved Vagabond


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


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.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

We


We live in a feel-good society, a culture thoroughly obsessed with finding happiness. And what does that society tell us to do? To eliminate "negative" feelings and accumulate "positive" ones in their place. It's a nice theory, and on the surface it seems to make sense. After all, who wants to have unpleasant feelings. But here's the catch: the things we generally value most in life bring with them a whole range of feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant. For example, in an intimate long-term relationship, although you will experience wonderful feelings such as love and joy, you will also inevitably experience disappointment and frustration.... It's pretty well impossible to create a better life if you're not prepared to have some uncomfortable feelings.

RUSS HARRIS

The Happiness Trap


We take less pains to be happy, than to appear so.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Moral Maxims


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


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


Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour.

JOSEPH ADDISON

The Spectator, Nov. 13, 1712


We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.

ROBERT WILSON LYND

Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions


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


Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, Thoughts


It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

An Art of Living


Give a man health and a course to steer; and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Captain Brassbound's Conversion


As to the desire for happiness, we find it is universal. That is one thing upon which all mankind are agreed.

NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY

Helps to Happiness


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


Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon