quotations about Happiness
But for now, happiness throws stones.
It guards itself.
I wait.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
You've got to be responsible for your own happiness -- you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
The best recipe for happiness and contentment I've seen is this: dig a big hole in the garden of your thoughts and put into it all your disillusions, disappointments, regrets, worries, troubles, doubts, and fears. Cover well with the earth of fruitfulness. Water it from the well of contentment. Sow on top the seeds of hope, courage, strength, patience, and love. Then when the time for gathering comes, may your harvest be a rich and fruitful one.
ZIG ZIGLAR
Staying Up
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Heart of the Matter
Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to John Page, Jul. 15, 1763
Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves--such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The World As I See It
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
attributed, Know Your Limits
Those who possess that treasure which no thief can take away,
Which, though on suppliants freely spent, increaseth day by day,
The source of inward happiness which shall outlast the earth--
To them e'en kings should yield the palm, and own their higher worth.
BHARTRHARI
"The Praise of the Wise Man"
That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continu'st such, owe to thy self,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
For no man lives, who always happy is.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
There is a restless endeavour in the mind of man after Happiness. This appetite is wrought into the original frame of our nature, and exerts itself in all parts of the creation that are endued with any degree of thought or sense. But, as the human mind is dignified by a more comprehensive faculty than can be found in the inferior animals, it is natural for men not only to have an eye each to his own happiness, but also to endeavour to promote that of others.
GEORGE BERKELEY
The Works of George Berkeley
The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearnings after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
We are all travelling to one destination--happiness; but none are going by the same road.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle!
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Notebooks, Aug. 16, 1916
Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon