quotations about Happiness
We all seek happiness so eagerly, that in the pursuit we often lose that joyous sense of existence, and those quiet daily pleasures, the value of which our pride alone prevents us from acknowledging.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
JOANNE HARRIS
Chocolat
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
The idea has been transmitted from generation to generation, that happiness is one large and beautiful precious stone--a single gem, so rare that all search for it is vain, all effort for it hopeless. It is not so. Happiness is a mosaic, composed of many smaller stones. Each taken apart and viewed singly, may be of little value; but when all are grouped together and judiciously combined and set, they form a graceful whole--a costly jewel. Trample not under foot, then, the little pleasures that appear along the daily path, while you look for some great joy which may never be attained.
T. L. HAINES & L. W. YAGGY
Royal Path of Life
Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
Happiness consists in moderate desires, wants easily satisfied.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays, vol. II
Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one pressed in tin ...
Each carries the same water.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Late Self-Portrait By Rembrandt"
He is truly a happy man who can, upon all occasions, reconcile himself to his fortune.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The universal human drive for instinctual gratification that Freud identifies with happiness is doomed to frustration. The external world not only fails to conform to our desires for uninterrupted immediacy, but the requirements of civilization also prohibit the very primal behavior ... that would allow for gratification.
DEAL WYATT HUDSON
Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction
The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed; each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
The journey to true happiness and to happiness now is not a journey of physical distance or time; it is one of personal "self-recovery," where we remember and reconnect consciously to an inner potential for joy--a paradise lost--waiting to be found.
ROBERT HOLDEN
Happiness Now: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast
Neither rejoice nor lament prematurely; for whatever may happen, all will be well if we only have health; for happiness exists--merely in the imagination.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
letter to Leopold Mozart, Nov. 29, 1777
I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found himself a happy lot. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
Captain Brassbound's Conversion
The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as a right of all Americans, as well as on the self-improvement shelves of every American bookstore. Yet the scientific evidence makes it seem unlikely that you can change your level of happiness in any sustainable way. It suggests that we each have a fixed range for happiness just as we do for weight. And just as dieters almost always regain the weight they lose, sad people don't become lastingly happy, and happy people don't become lastingly sad.
MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN
preface, Authentic Happiness
The continual search for happiness is a primary reason that so many people are miserable. If you make happiness your goal, you are almost certainly destined to fail. You will be on a continual roller coaster, changing from successful to unsuccessful with every mood change. Life is uncertain, and emotions aren’t stable. Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Your Road Map for Success
Happiness is sitting down to watch some slides of your neighbor's vacation and finding out that he spent two weeks in a nudist colony.
JOHNNY CARSON
Happiness Is a Dry Martini
Happiness is not the portion of man.
VOLTAIRE
Candide
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. Acceptance is the key to everything.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Esquire, Dec. 2007
I'd shoot the Bluebird of Happiness if it squawked as loud as you.
MARSHAL JIM CROWN
"Knife in the Darkness", Cimarron Strip