quotations about Happiness
From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech to the New York State Agricultural Association, Sep. 7, 1903
But for now, happiness throws stones.
It guards itself.
I wait.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
We are all travelling to one destination--happiness; but none are going by the same road.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
Happiness never becomes a habit.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
Happiness doesn't depend on how much you have to enjoy ... but how much you enjoy what you have!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Feb. 2, 1998
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
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
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"
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
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
As I enter on the path of happiness, I scatter the dregs and shreds and clippings of the past behind me. I divest myself of all the crapulous years.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Beloved Vagabond
All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
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
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
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
The most damaging erroneous belief about happiness is, of course, that happiness is somewhere else--that is, that it is not with you.
ROBERT HOLDEN
Happiness Now: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast
One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be “happy” is not included in the plan of “Creation.”
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
It seems the more we seek happiness, the more it eludes us. But despite our collective failure to achieve bliss, we continue to find its quest appealing, and the people who peddle pleasure make a lot of money off of it.
SUSIE MEISTER
"The Business of Happiness Is Booming but We're Still Miserable", The Observer, June 25, 2018
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