quotations about Happiness
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
Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people.... Conflicts in relationships--having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse--is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
Gold, gold! It may not buy happiness, but it can buy you a better state of misery, that's for sure!
COUNT DUCKULA
"Ghostly Gold", Count Duckula
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
Regard this world as the place to sow seed for eternity, and after taking such a portion from this world as may give you strength to take the journey to the other world, turn away from whatever is more than this. Realize that the future world is the place for enjoyment and happiness which is eternal, and the land to behold the excellence and beauty of the Lord; and make it your purpose, divine and omniscient grace assisting you, never to cease from the pursuit of them, but to secure as your prey, the phoenix of felicity and happiness.
MOHAMMED AL-GHAZZALI
The Alchemy of Happiness
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
Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul.
VOLTAIRE
A Philosophical Dictionary
He who strives for happiness is a fool.
The wise man makes happiness for another.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
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
If you ask a man how he is, he searches himself to find a pain to report. If he has nothing but happiness he hates to mention it, and says, "Oh, not half bad."
FRANK CRANE
"Hidden Happiness", Four Minute Essays
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
The happiness of life, like the light of day, consists not in one brilliant flash, but in a series of mild, serene rays.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.
ROBERT ANTHONY
attributed, The Graduate's Book of Practical Wisdom
Success is identical with happiness only on condition that we have aimed at and attained those things in life which are really worthwhile, and--if success is to be complete--the most worthwhile. Any success which does not result in happiness, in some one of its varied forms, for self or for others, is a sham.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
The Continuum Concept
We have all had the experience of being happy and of being unhappy, and we have all observed happiness and unhappiness in other people. As a result, many people feel they are experts on the topic of happiness. This claimed expertise, however, is often illusory. There is a natural tendency for us to assume that what is true of our lives is generally true of other people's lives. Thus, if someone has discovered that he is happier in the married state than he was when he was single, he may conclude that marriage increases human happiness. On the other hand, someone whose level of happiness has gone down after marriage may well decide that marriage is an outmoded happiness-demolishing institution. The fallacy in attempting to draw general conclusions solely on the basis of one's own experience is obvious.
MICHAEL W. EYSENCK
Happiness: Facts and Myths
A man may be happy anywhere that knows how to be contented.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Happiness can come in a single moment. And in a single moment it can go again. But a single moment does not create it. Happiness is created through countless choices made and then made again throughout a lifetime. You are its host as well as its guest. You give it form, shape, individuality, texture, tone. And what it allows you to give can change your world. Happiness can be stillness. But it isn't still. It wraps, enchants, heals, consoles, soothes, delights, calms, inspires and connects. It is on your face and in your body. It is in your life and being.
STEPHANIE DOWRICK
Choosing Happiness
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
Like all happiness, it did not last long.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women