quotations about Happiness
The paths by which people journey toward happiness lie in part through the world about them and in part through the experience of their souls. On the one hand, there is the happiness which comes from wealth, honor, the enjoyment of life, from health, culture, science, or art; and, on the other hand, there is the happiness which is to be found in a good conscience, in virtue, work, philanthropy, religion, devotion to great ideas and great deeds.
KARL HILTY
Happiness: Essays on the Meaning 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
I've read countless books about happiness. The Art of Happiness, Hardwiring Happiness, The Secret--all the happiness hits. But rather than maintaining Polyanna-esque positivity, my personality could best be described as one of those old guys from The Muppet Show.
SUSIE MEISTER
"The Business of Happiness Is Booming but We're Still Miserable", The Observer, June 25, 2018
Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable.
JOHN LENNON
The Beatles Anthology
Happiness is a hard master -- particularly other people's happiness.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Happiness in the present moment consists of very different states from happiness about the past and about the future, and itself embraces two very distinct kinds of things: pleasures and gratifications. The pleasures are delights that have clear sensory and strong emotional components, what philosophers call "raw feels"; ecstasy, thrills, orgasm, delight, mirth, exuberance, and comfort. They are evanescent, and they involve little, if any, thinking. The gratifications are activities we very much like doing, but they are not necessarily accompanied by any raw feelings at all. Rather, the gratifications engage us fully, we become immersed and absorbed in them, and we lose self-consciousness. Enjoying a great conversation, rock climbing, reading a good book, dancing, and making a slam dunk are all examples of activities in which time stops for us, our skills match the challenge, and we are in touch with our strengths. The gratifications last longer than the pleasures, they involve quite a lot of thinking and interpretation, they do not habituate easily, and they are undergirded by our strengths and virtues.
MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN
Authentic Happiness
The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, January 2, 2015
May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly, because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing the good things we have specified to be supremely blessed, though on the human scale of bliss.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Happiness is a shy thing. Grief is blatant and advertising. If a boy cuts his finger he howls, proclaiming his woe. If he is eating pie he sits still and says nothing.
FRANK CRANE
"Hidden Happiness", Four Minute Essays
Happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
To be conscious of happiness is to hear Nemesis rapping at the portals.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
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
Our happiness, like our fortune, is often seriously injured by injudicious economy.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Happiness--like love--is itself an attitude.
STEPHANIE DOWRICK
Choosing Happiness
The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
That is the secret of happiness and virtue -- liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their un-escapable social destiny.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Isn't it clear that bliss and envy--they are the numerator and the denominator of the fraction known as happiness.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Happiness was a term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Happiness flourishes where there is happiness.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
We are most happy when least aware of happiness.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts