HAPPINESS QUOTES

Don't put the key to happiness in someone else's pocket. ~Author Unknown The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. ~Jacques Prévert If you want to be happy, be. ~Leo Tolstoy Happiness is never stopping to think if you are. ~Palmer Sondreal Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy. ~Robert Anthony The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. ~Mark Twain If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. ~Edith Wharton Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. ~E.L. Konigsburg Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy. ~Cynthia Nelms Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. ~Robertson Davies Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad. ~Norm Papernick Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner. ~Colette The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet. ~James Openheim Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open. ~John Barrymore "Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called. ~A.A. Milne People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost. ~H. Jackson Brown It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed. ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other. When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack. ~Hazelmarie Elliott ("Mattie") Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. ~Margaret Young Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. ~St. Augustine Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts, 1931 This is my "depressed stance." When you’re depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you’ll start to feel better. If you’re going to get any joy out of being depressed, you’ve got to stand like this. ~Charles M. Schulz Pleasure is spread through the earth In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find. ~William Wordsworth, 1806 Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln Happiness is a form of courage. ~Holbrook Jackson We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all. ~Jean de La Bruyere Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys. ~Christian Nestell Bovee We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig Every now and then, when the world sits just right, a gentle breath of heaven fills my soul with delight... ~Hazelmarie "Mattie" Elliott, A Breath of Heaven It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. ~Berke Breathed The secret to happiness is to put the burden of proof on unhappiness. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory. ~Albert Schweitzer Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. ~Eleanor Roosevelt Happiness is a direction, not a place. ~Sydney J. Harris Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important. ~Janet Lane A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour. ~Author Unknown If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~Dalai Lama Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower. ~Author Unknown There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. ~Lady Blessington The best vitamin to be a happy person is B1. ~Author Unknown A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. ~Bernard de Fontenelle Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness? ~Yevgeny Zamyatin A happy thought is like a seed that sows positivity for all to reap. ~Miriam Muhammad Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. ~Immanuel Kant Man must search for what is right, and let happiness come on its own. ~Johann Pestalozzi He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. ~Henry Ward Beecher If you search the world for happiness, you may find it in the end, for the world is round and will lead you back to your door. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. ~Sigmund Freud There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. ~Salvador Dali The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony. ~V.S. Pritchett We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier. ~Walter Savage Landor The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. ~George Bernard Shaw Real elation is when you feel you could touch a star without standing on tiptoe. ~Doug Larson The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. ~Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954 Be happy, and a reason will come along. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com You can only have bliss if you don’t chase it. ~Henepola Gunaratana (Bhante G) If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years. ~Bertrand Russell The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. ~Doug Larson I think the key to life is just being a happy person, and happiness will bring you success. ~Diego Val Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world. Don’t go through life creaking. ~H.W. Byles What I’m looking for is a blessing that’s not in disguise. ~Kitty O’Neill Collins My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy. ~William Shakespeare Isn’t it cool when the days that are supposed to feel good, actually do? ~Jim Carrey Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. ~John Stuart Mill,Autobiography, 1873 You can’t postpone sorrow, so why would you postpone happiness? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way. ~Thich Nhat Hanh How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and there will never be a time when it is not now. ~Gerald Jampolsky We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960 I have only two kinds of days: happy and hysterically happy. ~Allen J. Lefferdink The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable. ~Joseph Roux The search for happiness is unlike any other search, for we search last in the likeliest places. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves. ~Andrew Delbanco Happiness is the feeling you’re feeling when you want to keep feeling it. ~Author Unknown Joy is a flower that blooms when you do. ~Author Unknown So long as we can lose any happiness, we possess some. ~Booth Tarkington Jumping for joy is good exercise. ~Author Unknown Joy never feasts so high as when the first course is of misery. ~John Suckling Happiness is distraction from the human tragedy. ~J.M. Reinoso We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. ~Thomas Merton, 1955 Enjoyment is just the sound of being centered. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. ~Mother Teresa Seeking happiness, I passed many travelers headed in the opposite direction, seeking happiness. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com She thinks that happiness is a mat that sits on her doorway. ~Rob Thomas, "3 A.M." Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy. ~Gretta Brooker Palmer Happiness is a way station between too little and too much. ~Channing Pollock,Mr. Moneypenny The happy have whole days, and those they choose. The unhappy have but hours, and those they lose. ~Colley Cibber The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up. ~Charles L. Morgan Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. ~Iris Murdoch Happiness is... usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. ~Thomas Szasz When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content. ~Niccolo Machiavelli The greatest gift we give to someone who loves us is simply to be happy. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness. ~Author Unknown The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things. ~Ernest Dimnet One joy scatters a hundred griefs. ~Chinese Proverb Doing cartwheels in the green grass of happiness and skipping high towards the blue heavenly skies of joy! ~Terri Guillemets We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. ~George Bernard Shaw, Candida, 1898 One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers. ~Eugene O’Neill A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is. ~Seneca One filled with joy preaches without preaching. ~Mother Teresa Misery is almost always the result of thinking. ~Joseph Joubert My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate. ~Thornton Wilder Be happy. It’s one way of being wise. ~Colette Whatever you set aside to seek happiness, remember where you put it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment – a little makes the way of the best happiness. ~Friedrich Nietzsche The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. ~William Saroyan People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy. ~Anton Chekhov Happiness is an inside job. ~William Arthur Ward Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens. ~Douglas Jerrold Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it. ~Don Herold If you are not happy here and now, you never will be. ~Taisen Deshimaru It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely. ~Georges Duhamel If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. ~J.D. Salinger There is no expert on what happiness is but many on what it might have been. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com If a person’s basic state of mind is serene and calm, then it is possible for this inner peace to overwhelm a painful physical experience. On the other hand, if someone is suffering from depression, anxiety, or any form of emotional distress, then even if he or she happens to be enjoying physical comforts, he will not really be able to experience the happiness that these could bring. ~Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama Eden is that old fashioned House We dwell in every day Without suspecting our abode Until we drive away... ~Emily Dickinson Happiness is a function of accepting what is. ~Werner Erhard If you flatter yourself properly you will be better able to enjoy yourself. Stretch your joy so that others enjoy you too. ~Willis Goth Regier, In Praise of Flattery, 2007 Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. ~Maxim Gorky Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by. ~Carl Sandburg We never give up wanting things for ourselves, but there comes a day when what we want for ourselves is someone else’s happiness. ~Robert Brault,rbrault.blogspot.com Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind. ~John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1863 Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe When you’re really happy, the birds chirp and the sun shines even on cold dark winter nights — and flowers will bloom on a barren land. ~Terri Guillemets Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. ~Joseph Addison Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~Samuel Johnson There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ~Freya Stark, The Journey’s Echo Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle. ~Paulo Coelho Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness — otherwise how would you know when you’re happy? ~Leslie Caron On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so. ~William R. Inge To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956 Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ~Mahatma Gandhi Sometimes we don’t find the thing that will make us happy because we can’t give up the thing that was supposed to. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Joy is not in things; it is in us. ~Richard Wagner Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. ~Denis Waitley Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960 Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness. ~Don Marquis If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that’s enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French by Richard Howard Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine. ~Henry Ward Beecher [T]he beautiful world of blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her heart... life still called to her with many insistent voices. ~L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables  [the comfort of knowing the world goes on after grief, and we can too —tεᖇᖇ¡·g] Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com When a man has lost all happiness, he’s not alive. Call him a breathing corpse. ~Sophocles One day you just say "To heck with it," and you go looking for trouble, and you find happiness. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960 Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit. ~Hosea Ballou I think Joy sleeps in strange places. We're always looking for her in shiny, happy, fun times, assuming that Joy prefers her twin brother, Pleasure, when she often hangs out with her somewhat stoic big sister, Strength. Joy is not always easy to recognize, dirt-smudged and sweating, brambles in her hair. I want to believe she sometimes wears a ski mask. ~Edmond Manning, King Perry To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. ~Charles Caleb Colton Some pursue happiness, others create it. ~Author Unknown We enter life with brilliant expectations of happiness: we picture to ourselves a scene of continued enjoyments, which, when viewed at a distance, enchants the eye and captivates the fancy; but when the hand of time has brought nearer to us the glowing picture which we formed in our youth, how are its colours faded, and our expectations disappointed! We lean on the world and find it a broken reed.... A few rays of happiness do, indeed, sometimes illuminate our horizon, but the passing clouds seldom fail to convince us that their duration is not to be depended upon. ~, "The Benefits of Affliction," The Christian Guardian, and Church of England Magazine, December 1825 Happiness pulses with every beat of my heart. ~Terri Guillemets Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom. ~Benjamin Franklin The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. ~Epictetus Gather the crumbs of happiness and they will make you a loaf of contentment. ~Author Unknown 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 Happiness is the natural flower of duty. ~Phillips Brooks But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~Albert Camus Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind. ~Thomas Jefferson We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. ~Charles Kingsley You need to learn to be happy by nature, because you’ll seldom have the chance to be happy by circumstance. ~Lavetta Sue Wegman It is a comely fashion to be glad; Joy is the grace we say to God. ~Jean Ingelow With some whose nerves have a deep covering of fat, happiness is less of a problem that it is an accident of anatomy. ~Attributed to Henry S. Haskins Find a place where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. ~Joseph Campbell If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. ~W. Beran Wolfe You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Albert Camus Looking back on a happy life, one realizes that one was not happy all the time. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of a man in strong health, as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits of life. ~John Ruskin Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other. ~Norman Bradburn Cheerfulness is the very flower of health. ~Proverb With penetrating insight, the mystics will tell us that when we have a desire for a certain thing, a certain experience, and we fulfill that desire, the happiness we feel is not something given by that thing or experience; it is due to having no craving for a little while. ~Eknath Easwaran, The Mantram Handbook The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. ~William Morris> If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time. ~Josh Billings Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it. ~William Feather Happiness is your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill. ~Johnny Carson It is not happiness until you capture it and store it out of the reach of time. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. ~J.D. Salinger Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it. ~François VI de la Rochefoucault Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. ~Author Unknown To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness Don’t shade your eyes from the bright joy of the world. ~Terri Guillemets Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. ~Mildred Barthel [U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental. ~Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, 1829 Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. ~Robert Frost The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. ~Author Unknown Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. ~Margaret Lee Runbeck Many people are extremely happy, but are absolutely worthless to society. ~Charles Gow To be happy, you must fancy that everything you have is a gift, and you the chosen, though you worked your tail off for every bit of it. ~Robert Brault,rbrault.blogspot.com All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming — a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve. ~Robert S. Lynd I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. ~Abd-El-Raham Happiness is the soundtrack of my life. ~Terri Guillemets The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it. ~C.P. Snow Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionar y