quotations about Happiness
But for now, happiness throws stones.
It guards itself.
I wait.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
And happiness ... Well, after all, desires torment us, don't they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one ... What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it's been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign -- the divine minus.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
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
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Happiness can not come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech at Groton, May 24, 1904
For no man lives, who always happy is.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
We live in a feel-good society, a culture thoroughly obsessed with finding happiness. And what does that society tell us to do? To eliminate "negative" feelings and accumulate "positive" ones in their place. It's a nice theory, and on the surface it seems to make sense. After all, who wants to have unpleasant feelings. But here's the catch: the things we generally value most in life bring with them a whole range of feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant. For example, in an intimate long-term relationship, although you will experience wonderful feelings such as love and joy, you will also inevitably experience disappointment and frustration.... It's pretty well impossible to create a better life if you're not prepared to have some uncomfortable feelings.
RUSS HARRIS
The Happiness Trap
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
Happiness is not the end result of attaining success, fame or wealth it is the inner joy you experience when you love your work journey, it's here in present moment when you fall in love with the process.
ANKIT SHENDE
Happiness Is Not For Sale
Happiness does not depend upon surroundings, but upon disposition.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
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
Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people.... Conflicts in relationships--having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse--is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
False pleasures come from without and are imperfect: happiness is internal and our own.
JOHN LUBBOCK
Peace and Happiness
Who would dare speak the word "happiness" in these tortured times? Yet millions today continue to seek happiness. These years have been for them only a prolonged postponement, at the end of which they hope to find that the possibility for happiness has been renewed. Who could blame them? And who could say that they are wrong? What would justice be without the chance for happiness? What purpose would freedom serve, if we had to live in misery?
ALBERT CAMUS
Combat, Dec. 22, 1944
We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
If you ask a man how he is, he searches himself to find a pain to report. If he has nothing but happiness he hates to mention it, and says, "Oh, not half bad."
FRANK CRANE
"Hidden Happiness", Four Minute Essays
Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Call no man happy till he is dead.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
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