quotations about Happiness
Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.
EPICTETUS
The Art of Living
States of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intense enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
Happiness is a hard master -- particularly other people's happiness.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment.
IMMANUEL KANT
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
What is the worth of anything,
But for the happiness 'twill bring?
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE
Learning
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
Happiness is variously associated by different people with a multiplicity of conscious states, such as calm contentment, ecstasy, hilarity, elation, and others. These states all have some claim to be parts or aspects of happiness.... However, they certainly don't all obtain together, and some of them, once again, seem incompatible with each other--ecstasy and calm contentment, for instance.... It may be that happiness is one of those concepts of "folk psychology" that doesn't designate any psychological state, and can't have any explication in terms of the kind of science that tries to discover general laws or regularities.
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
A Brief History of Happiness
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
We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.
THICH NHAT HANH
Peace is Every Step
Happiness is a road-side flower, growing on the highways of Usefulness,
Plucked, it shall wither in thy hand; passed by, it is fragrance to thy spirit.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Most folks are just about as happy as they've made up their minds to be.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, January 2, 2015
Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Dream Play
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We all have direct experience with things that do or don't make us happy, we all have friends, therapists, cabdrivers, and talk-show hosts who tell us about things that will or won't make us happy, and yet, despite all this practice and all this coaching, our search for happiness often culminates in a stinky mess. We expect the next car, the next house, or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn't and even though others keep telling us that the next ones won't.
DANIEL GILBERT
Stumbling on Happiness
The best type of affection is reciprocally life-giving: each receives affection with joy and gives it without effort, and each finds the whole world more interesting in consequence of the existence of this reciprocal happiness. There is, however, another kind, by no means uncommon, in which one person sucks the vitality of the other, one receives what the other gives, but gives almost nothing in return. Some very vital people belong to this bloodsucking type. They extract the vitality from one victim after another, but while they prosper and grow interesting, those upon whom they live grow pale and dim and dull.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Happiness hates the timid! So does science!
EUGENE O'NEILL
Strange Interlude
Happiness is when you see your husband's old girlfriend and she's fatter than you.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers