quotations about Happiness
The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
The Continuum Concept
He who strives for happiness is a fool.
The wise man makes happiness for another.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Marble Faun
There are many teachers who assert positions, which logically lead to pessimism. Some declare that happiness is a will-o-the-wisp ever deluding the eager grasp, and it is better not to attempt the impossible. Others see life lived under a leaden sky and on a sodden earth. They agree that to some, and under some conditions, happiness of a kind would be possible, but it is so rare a chance that it is not worth counting on ourselves becoming the fortunate exceptions. There is not enough happiness to go round. Others assert that the sure way to lose happiness is to seek it. If you aim at it at all, it must be indirectly. You may have it at the back of your mind, but you must not have your eye on it. Still another objection to the pursuit of happiness is that it is selfish. Yet everybody would admit that a world of happy human beings is an ideal worth while. How is this even to begin to be possible, if nobody is ever to try to be happy himself?
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
He who has once been happy is for aye
Out of destruction's reach. His fortune then
Holds nothing secret; and Eternity,
Which is a mystery to other men,
Has like a woman given him its joy.
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT
With Esther
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Marble Faun
The only true happiness lies in knowing who you are ... and making peace with it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Narcissus in Chains
What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
Very much less than we think does our happiness depend upon that which is external to us. If there is no heaven within, all the externalities of an outward heaven would be insufficient to produce happiness.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Like all happiness, it did not last long.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
The problem with the concept of happiness is trying to make it do enough without making it do too much. If we define it narrowly as a certain type of feeling or physiological state, then we can, in principle, measure it objectively, but it is too trivial a thing to be the foundation of all public life and private decisions. On the other hand, if we define it broadly as something like 'the elements of a good life', then it is so broad as to beg the question, and certainly too broad to be measured in national statistics. Yet we intuitively feel that there is something called happiness, something unitary but not trivial, concrete enough to strive for yet broad enough to be worth striving for.
DANIEL NETTLE
Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
Do you know what I think happiness is really? Lookin' forward.
JOHN HARTLEY MANNERS
Happiness and Other Plays
Happiness is a condition of mind not a result of circumstances.
JOHN LUBBOCK
attributed, Character and Conduct: A Book of Helpful Thoughts by Great Writers of Past and Present Ages
The happiest people are the people with the best attitudes, not the best lives.
BOB LONSBERRY
A Various Language
A man who exercises habitually only one set of his faculties, to the neglect of the others, is only a fragment of a man, and his happiness though it may be great, cannot be complete.
JOHN FORBES
Of Happiness in Relations to Work and Knowledge
Happiness has to be installed in each person as a state of affairs completely cut off from the process that brought it about and, in particular, from the real situation. Man has to be affected with happiness. It is a tonality given to him. Contradiction: if one does take care to give him happiness, it is because he is a free creature--but in order to give it to him, one turns him into an object.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Notebooks for an Ethics
Happiness is NOT a constant state. As humans we experience and grow through a variety of emotions. The expectation that we should be happy all the time will leave anyone with an expectation hangover.
CHRISTINE HASSLER
"13 Incredibly Smart Tips To Be Happier From Mental Health Experts", BuzzFeed, July 9, 2015
We ne'er can be
Made happy by compulsion.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The Three Graves
Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.
AMY LOWELL
"Happiness", Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say "I have learned" and "I have loved," you will also be able to say "I have been happy."
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Rama II