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Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
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
Call no man happy till he is dead.
If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.
JANE AUSTEN, Mansfield Park
- We ne'er can be
- Made happy by compulsion.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Three Graves
Happiness hates the timid! So does science!
EUGENE O'NEILL, Strange Interlude
- Every object, every being,
- is a jar full of delight.
It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
- If it makes you happy
- It can't be that bad
- If it makes you happy
- Then why the hell are you so sad
SHERYL CROW, "If It Makes You Happy"
No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.
STEPHEN KING, Wolves of the Calla
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, John Mason's Know Your Limits
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Candida
- What is the worth of anything,
- But for the happiness 'twill bring?
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE, Learning
Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.
AUGUST STRINDBERG, A Dream Play
There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, First Inaugural Address, Apr. 30, 1789
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to John Page, Jul. 15, 1763
To be conscious of happiness is to hear Nemesis rapping at the portals.
PHILIP MOELLER, The Roadhouse in Arden
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Marble Faun
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
ROBERT FROST, as quoted in Vernon McLellan's Wise Words and Quotes
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
THOMAS SZASZ, The Second Sin
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
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
- 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
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
We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.
THICH NHAT HANH, Peace is Every Step
What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Aug. 22, 1837
I kept looking for happiness, and then I realized: This is it. It's a moment, and it comes, and it goes, and it'll come back again. I yearn for things, but at the same time I'm just peaceful.
NICOLE KIDMAN, Vanity Fair, Oct. 2007
Happiness expanded like an explosion inside me--so extreme, so violent that I wasn't sure I'd survive it.
STEPHENIE MEYER, Breaking Dawn
- 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"
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
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.
Whatever the philosophers may say, it remains true that, from the first hour of man's waking consciousness until that consciousness ceases, his most ardent desire is to be happy, and that the moment of his most profound regret is when he becomes convinced that on this earth perfect happiness cannot be found. Here is the problem which gives to the various ages of human history their special characters. Blithe are those ages when young and progressive nations still hope for happiness, or when men believe that in some new formula of philosophy, or of religion, or perhaps in some new industrial programme, the secret of human happiness has at last been found. Gloomy are those ages in which, as in our time, great masses of people are burdened with the conviction that all these familiar formulas have been illusions, and when persons of the keenest insight say--as they are now saying--that the very word happiness has in it a note of melancholy. No sooner, we are told, does one speak of happiness than it flees from him. In its very nature it lies beyond the sphere of practical realization.
KARL HILTY, Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life
The duty of happiness becomes clearer when we see how it affects others. It is the merry heart that makes the cheerful countenance, and it is the cheerful countenance that spreads cheer to make other hearts merry. The sunny soul brings sunshine everywhere. A bright and happy temperament is a great social asset, adding to the happiness of the world.
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
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