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
He is truly a happy man who can, upon all occasions, reconcile himself to his fortune.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
Happiness consists in moderate desires, wants easily satisfied.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays, vol. II
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Heart of the Matter
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
Happiness is not the portion of man.
VOLTAIRE
Candide
Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
For no man lives, who always happy is.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearnings after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
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"
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
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
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
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"
I'd shoot the Bluebird of Happiness if it squawked as loud as you.
MARSHAL JIM CROWN
"Knife in the Darkness", Cimarron Strip
Past happiness augments present wretchedness.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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
attributed, Know Your Limits