Happiness

Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do. True happiness comes to him who does his work well, followed by a relaxing and refreshing period of rest. True happiness comes from the right amount of work for the day. - Lin Yutang

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others. - Thomas Jefferson

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. - Plato

Not what we have, but what we use, not what we see, but what we choose, these are the things that mar or bless the sum of human happiness. - Joseph Fort Newton

No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. - Ayn Rand

The state of life is most happy when superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting. - Plutarch

No person is either so happy or so unhappy as he imagines. - Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Before desiring something passionately one should inquire into the happiness of the man who possesses it. - Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We are never so happy or so unhappy as we think - Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable. - Leo Rosten

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. - Margaret Lee Runbeck

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy, I mean that if you are happy you will be good. - Bertrand Russell

I may have thought the road to a world of free and happy human beings shorter than it is proving to be, but I was not wrong in thinking that it is worth while to live with a view to bringing it nearer. - Bertrand Russell

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. - Bertrand Russell

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. - Bertrand Russell

I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism. - George Santayana

Of all created comforts, God is the lender; you are the borrower, not the owner. - Walter R. Rutherford

The profoundest affinities are the most readily felt; they remain a background and standard for all happiness and if we trace them out we succeed. - George Santayana

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? - Charles M. Schulz

Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so. - Arthur Schopenhauer

No man is happy but by comparison. - Thomas Shadwell

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. - George Bernard Shaw

When a man is happy, every effort to express his happiness mars its completeness. - Alexander Smith

Like swimming, riding, writing, or playing gold, happiness can be learned. - Boris Sokoloff

To describe happiness is to diminish it. - Stendhal

Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness. - Frank Tyger

Happiness comes and goes and is short on staying power. - Frank Tyger

Many people have known happiness, but didn't know it when they had it. - Frank Tyger

You never see the stock called Happiness quoted on the exchange. - Henry Van Dyke

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time. - Edith Wharton

Happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty. - The Bible, Job 5:17

Happiness is good health and a bad memory. - Ingrid Bergman

In about the same degree as you are helpful, you will be happy. - Karl Reiland

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get. - Dale Carnegie

Happiness consists in activity - it is a running stream, not a stagnant pool. - John Mason Good

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. - Proverb 3:13

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves. - La Rochefoucauld

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day - that is the highest of arts. - Henry David Thoreau

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. - James M Barrie

It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness. - James M. Barrie

The happiness of you life depends on the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notion unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. - Marcus Aurelius Antonnus

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp. - John Berry

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs. - Josh Billings

Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty to be happy. So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers. - John S. Bonnell, D.D.

Happiness is a resultant of the relative strengths of a positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other. - Norman Bradburn

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has not taste. - Emily Bronte

Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars. - Hobart Brow

No man, with a man's heart in him gets far on his way without some bitter, soul-searching disappointment. Happy is he who is brave enough to push on to another stage of the journey. - John Mason Brown

The only true happiness cones from squandering ourselves for a purpose. - John Mason Brown

Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

To be happy, you must learn to forget yourself. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

There comes forever something between us and what we deem our happiness. - Lord Byron

If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor- poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living. - Herbert N. Casson

I do not understand what the man who is happy wants in order to be happier. - Cicero

We communicate happiness to others not often by great acts of devotion and self-sacrifice, but by the absence of fault-finding and censure, by being ready to sympathize with their notions and feelings, instead of forcing them to sympathize with ours. - Adam Clarke

I have lived to know that the great secret of happiness is this: never suffer your energies to stagnate. The old adage of too many irons in the fire, conveys an abominable lie. You cannot have too many - poker, tongs and all - keep them all going. - Adam Clarke

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions-the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heart-felt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When men are easy in themselves, they let others remain so. - Anthony A. Cooper-Lord Shaftesbury

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit. - William Cowper

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. - Benjamin Disraeli

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he, who can call today his own. - John Dryden

The high prize of life, the crowning glory of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness - whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords or canals, or statues, or songs. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is only one way to happiness, and that is cease worrying about the things which are beyond the power of our will. - Epictetus

Profit is a by-product of work; happiness is its chief product. - Henry Ford

We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy, than in endeavoring to be so ourselves. - Oliver Goldsmith

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. - John Gunther

Planning for happiness is rarely successful. Happiness just happens. - Robert Half

I do not know of any sure way of making others happy as being so one's self. - Arthur Helps

He that talks much of his happiness summons grief. - George Herbert

It's pretty hard to find what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed. - Kin Hubbard

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it. - Elbert Hubbard

One can endure sorrow alone, but it takes two to be glad. - Elbert Hubbard

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or more correctly, being loved in spite of yourself. - Victor Hugo

The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so. - David Hume

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular reason for being so except that they are so. - William Ralph Inge

The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing. - William Ralph Inge

Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result. - Robert G. Ingersoll

It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness. - Thomas Jefferson

Happiness should always remain a bit incomplete. After all, dreams are boundless. - Anatoly Karpov

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The days that make us happy make us wise. - John Masefield

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe. - Orison S. Marden

Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness. - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. - Abraham Lincoln

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience, or none at all. - Ogden Nash

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye. - Austin O'Malley

If you count the sunny and the cloudy days of the whole year, you will find that the sunshine predominates. - Ovid

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older. - William Lyon Phelps

The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.  - Bertrand Russell

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.  - Sophocles

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.  - Thich Nhat Hanh

Follow your bliss.  - Joseph Campbell

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. - Ayn Rand

No man is happy unless he believes he is. - Publilius Syrus

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.  - Allan K. Chalmers

Happiness is living by inner purpose. - David Augsburger

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth. - George Bernard Shaw

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know that there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness. - Albert Camus

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it. - Goethe

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them. - Goethe

There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.  - Marguerite Gardiner Blessington

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime. - Dale Carnegie

If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours. - Jacquilinemae Rudd

Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.  - Og Mandino

There are two things people want more than sex and money... recognition and praise. - Mary Kay Ash

Happiness is something to do, something to love, something to hope for.  - Chinese proverb

A perverse temper and fretful disposition will make any state of life whatsoever unhappy. - Cicero

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.  - George Santayana

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are. Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself. - R.J. Baughan

Nowhere does a man retire with more quiet or freedom than into his own soul. - Marcus Aurelius

A joy that is shared is a joy made double. - English Proverb

You won't be happy with more until you're happy with what you've got.  - Viki King

If it's nothing more than a smile - give that away and keep on giving it. - Beth Brown

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy. (b. 1916, American Writer-Author)  - Robert Newton Anthony

Happiness adds and multiplies, as we divide it with others. - A. Nielsen