quotations about Happiness
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
Maybe you have to wait for happiness. Maybe the rest is only words.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
The Writing Life
To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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 is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Why do we so often settle for what makes us devoutly unhappy! Why do we accept that happiness just isn't possible?
ANNE RICE
The Wolves of Midwinter
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
You have to fight to carve little pieces of happiness out of your life, or the everyday emergencies will eat up everything.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Cerulean Sins
Happiness--like love--is itself an attitude.
STEPHANIE DOWRICK
Choosing Happiness
Our happiness, like our fortune, is often seriously injured by injudicious economy.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The best type of affection is reciprocally life-giving: each receives affection with joy and gives it without effort, and each finds the whole world more interesting in consequence of the existence of this reciprocal happiness. There is, however, another kind, by no means uncommon, in which one person sucks the vitality of the other, one receives what the other gives, but gives almost nothing in return. Some very vital people belong to this bloodsucking type. They extract the vitality from one victim after another, but while they prosper and grow interesting, those upon whom they live grow pale and dim and dull.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
Happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Happiness is when you see your husband's old girlfriend and she's fatter than you.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
My capacity for happiness ... you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I found myself in possession of happiness once more, and the evils I had lately suffered, gave me uncommon relish for it.
ETHAN ALLEN
A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity
Happiness is a hard master -- particularly other people's happiness.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
ALBERT CAMUS
Caligula
One secret to long-term happiness is surrounding yourself with others who are also happy.
DEEP PATEL
"20 Secrets to Living a Happier Life", Entrepreneur, July 2, 2018