quotations about Happiness
My friends' happiness forms part of my own.
PEDRO ALEXIS TABENSKY
Happiness: Personhood
He who has once been happy is for aye
Out of destruction's reach. His fortune then
Holds nothing secret; and Eternity,
Which is a mystery to other men,
Has like a woman given him its joy.
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT
With Esther
What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
Happy are those men who live without ambition, distrust, or disguise.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The happiest people are the people with the best attitudes, not the best lives.
BOB LONSBERRY
A Various Language
It seems the more we seek happiness, the more it eludes us. But despite our collective failure to achieve bliss, we continue to find its quest appealing, and the people who peddle pleasure make a lot of money off of it.
SUSIE MEISTER
"The Business of Happiness Is Booming but We're Still Miserable", The Observer, June 25, 2018
The only true happiness lies in knowing who you are ... and making peace with it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Narcissus in Chains
There are many teachers who assert positions, which logically lead to pessimism. Some declare that happiness is a will-o-the-wisp ever deluding the eager grasp, and it is better not to attempt the impossible. Others see life lived under a leaden sky and on a sodden earth. They agree that to some, and under some conditions, happiness of a kind would be possible, but it is so rare a chance that it is not worth counting on ourselves becoming the fortunate exceptions. There is not enough happiness to go round. Others assert that the sure way to lose happiness is to seek it. If you aim at it at all, it must be indirectly. You may have it at the back of your mind, but you must not have your eye on it. Still another objection to the pursuit of happiness is that it is selfish. Yet everybody would admit that a world of happy human beings is an ideal worth while. How is this even to begin to be possible, if nobody is ever to try to be happy himself?
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
If you wish to be happy, think not of what is to come nor of that which you have no control over but rather of the now and of that which you are able to change.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
Happiness is a condition of mind not a result of circumstances.
JOHN LUBBOCK
attributed, Character and Conduct: A Book of Helpful Thoughts by Great Writers of Past and Present Ages
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Marble Faun
Happiness is NOT a constant state. As humans we experience and grow through a variety of emotions. The expectation that we should be happy all the time will leave anyone with an expectation hangover.
CHRISTINE HASSLER
"13 Incredibly Smart Tips To Be Happier From Mental Health Experts", BuzzFeed, July 9, 2015
Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.
AMY LOWELL
"Happiness", Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Do you know what I think happiness is really? Lookin' forward.
JOHN HARTLEY MANNERS
Happiness and Other Plays
In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say "I have learned" and "I have loved," you will also be able to say "I have been happy."
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Rama II
Happiness is a tiger in your tank and a pussycat in your back seat.
JOHNNY CARSON
Happiness Is a Dry Martini
Very much less than we think does our happiness depend upon that which is external to us. If there is no heaven within, all the externalities of an outward heaven would be insufficient to produce happiness.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask too much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone
A somewhat depressing lesson that we learn from life is that there is no guaranteed sure-fire formula for happiness.
MICHAEL W. EYSENCK
Happiness: Facts and Myths
The problem with the concept of happiness is trying to make it do enough without making it do too much. If we define it narrowly as a certain type of feeling or physiological state, then we can, in principle, measure it objectively, but it is too trivial a thing to be the foundation of all public life and private decisions. On the other hand, if we define it broadly as something like 'the elements of a good life', then it is so broad as to beg the question, and certainly too broad to be measured in national statistics. Yet we intuitively feel that there is something called happiness, something unitary but not trivial, concrete enough to strive for yet broad enough to be worth striving for.
DANIEL NETTLE
Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile