quotations about Happiness
Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
There are some individuals who have too strong a craving, a will, and a nostalgia for happiness ever to reach it. They always retain a bitter and passionate aftertaste, and that's the best they can hope for.
ALBERT CAMUS
letter, Jun. 18, 1938
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
JANE AUSTEN
Mansfield Park
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Garden of Eden
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
AYN RAND
Anthem
Happiness flourishes where there is happiness.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
So long as men strive for their individual happiness only, so long they shall strive for it in vain, because they strive for something which does not exist. When one will strive for all and all for one, then, and then only, general happiness will be possible. Until then men will remain savages, in constant war with each other, like fools destroying the very house that shelters them.
NORBERT LAFAYETTE SAVAY
Emancipation
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to Madame Louise Colet, Aug. 13, 1846
There is even evidence happiness is contagious, so happier people help others around them to become happier, too.
JOSEPH FRENCH
"Speak health, hope, happiness to your children", IndeOnline, June 30, 2018
If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
The Architecture of Happiness
Human nature, at its best, had always been based on a deep heroic restlessness, on wanting something--something else, something more, whether it be true love or a glimpse just beyond the horizon. It was the promise of happiness, not the attainment of it, that had driven the entire engine, the folly and glory of who we are.
WILL FERGUSON
Happiness
Happiness is a Moving Target.
DON WICKER
Happiness Is a Moving Target
The future seems a little gloomy! Go to bed early, sleep well, eat moderately at breakfast; the future looks brighter. The world's outlook may not have changed, but our capacity for dealing with it has. Happiness, or unhappiness, depends to some extent on external conditions, but also, and in most cases chiefly, on our own physical and mental powers. Some people would be discontented in Paradise, others ... are cheerful in a graveyard.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call "happiness", if we be but able to entertain them.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Kleiner, October 1916
The belief that happiness has to be deserved has led to centuries of pain, guilt, and deception. So firmly have we clung to this single, illusory belief that we've almost forgotten the real truth about happiness. So busy are we trying to deserve happiness that we no longer have much time for ideas such as: Happiness is natural, happiness is a birthright, happiness is free, happiness is a choice, happiness is within, and happiness is being. The moment you believe that happiness has to be deserved, you must toil forevermore.
ROBERT HOLDEN
Happiness Now: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast
Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the Future; Age knows her as the Dream.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
ALBERT CAMUS
Caligula
There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
RENé DESCARTES
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence.
WASHINGTON IRVING
Old Christmas
States of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intense enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity