quotations about Happiness
Happiness is not so much in the amount of treasure we possess as in being content with what we have.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
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
Perhaps happiness is, was, and ever shall be the ultimate human end in every time and place.
DARRIN M. MCMAHON
Happiness: A History
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
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
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
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Garden of Eden
Happiness is when you see your husband's old girlfriend and she's fatter than you.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
One secret to long-term happiness is surrounding yourself with others who are also happy.
DEEP PATEL
"20 Secrets to Living a Happier Life", Entrepreneur, July 2, 2018
All we are guaranteed is the pursuit of happiness. You have to catch up with it yourself.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
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
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
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
The happy man is he who turns his soul
Unto the light of joys that he can find;
And pays each day its just demand of toll,
But shuts the future troubles from his mind.
EDGAR GUEST
"The Present"
As the sea is beautiful not only in calm but also in storm, so is happiness found not only in peace but also in strife.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
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
What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.
VOLTAIRE
A Philosophical Dictionary
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
I've read countless books about happiness. The Art of Happiness, Hardwiring Happiness, The Secret--all the happiness hits. But rather than maintaining Polyanna-esque positivity, my personality could best be described as one of those old guys from The Muppet Show.
SUSIE MEISTER
"The Business of Happiness Is Booming but We're Still Miserable", The Observer, June 25, 2018