quotations about Happiness
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
Happiness ... does not consist in the gratification of desires, nor in that freedom from care, that imaginary state of repose, to which most men look so anxiously forward, and with the prospect of which their labors are lightened, but which is more languid, irksome, and insupportable than all the toils of active life. True, the objects we pursue with so much ardor are insignificant in themselves, and never fulfil our extravagant expectations; but this by no means proves them unworthy of pursuit. Properly to estimate their value, we must take into view all the pleasurable emotions they awaken prior to attainment.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
Hints on Success in Life
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Garden of Eden
Happiness is a hard master -- particularly other people's happiness.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Maybe you have to wait for happiness. Maybe the rest is only words.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
The Writing Life
The happy man is he who turns his soul
Unto the light of joys that he can find;
And pays each day its just demand of toll,
But shuts the future troubles from his mind.
EDGAR GUEST
"The Present"
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
Happiness flourishes where there is happiness.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
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
The happy should not insist too much upon their happiness in the presence of the unhappy.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
To be conscious of happiness is to hear Nemesis rapping at the portals.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
We all have direct experience with things that do or don't make us happy, we all have friends, therapists, cabdrivers, and talk-show hosts who tell us about things that will or won't make us happy, and yet, despite all this practice and all this coaching, our search for happiness often culminates in a stinky mess. We expect the next car, the next house, or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn't and even though others keep telling us that the next ones won't.
DANIEL GILBERT
Stumbling on Happiness
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
ALBERT CAMUS
Caligula
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"
Happiness is a road-side flower, growing on the highways of Usefulness,
Plucked, it shall wither in thy hand; passed by, it is fragrance to thy spirit.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Happiness--like love--is itself an attitude.
STEPHANIE DOWRICK
Choosing Happiness
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr