Quotations about Happiness

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. ~Benjamin Franklin


Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. ~Jacques Prévert


If you want to be happy, be. ~Leo Tolstoy


Happiness is never stopping to think if you are. ~Palmer Sondreal


Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy. ~Robert Anthony


The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. ~Mark Twain


If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. ~Edith Wharton


Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. ~E.L. Konigsburg


Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy. ~Cynthia Nelms


Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. ~Robertson Davies


Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad. ~Norm Papernick


Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky


What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. ~Colette


The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet. ~James Openheim


Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. ~John Barrymore


"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. ~A.A. Milne


People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost. ~H. Jackson Browne


It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed. ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard


Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other. When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack. ~Hazelmarie Elliott (“Mattie”)


Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. ~Margaret Young


Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. ~St. Augustine


Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts, 1931


This is my "depressed stance." When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this. ~Charlie Brown


Pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.
~William Wordsworth, 1806


Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln


Happiness is a form of courage. ~Holbrook Jackson


We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all. ~Jean de La Bruyere


Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys. ~Christian Nestell Bovee


We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig


Happiness pulses with every beat of my heart. ~Terri Guillemets


Every now and then,
when the world sits just right,
a gentle breath of heaven
fills my soul with delight...
~Hazelmarie ‘Mattie’ Elliott, A Breath of Heaven


It's never too late to have a happy childhood. ~Berke Breathed


Happiness is the soundtrack of my life. ~Grey Livingston


Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory. ~Albert Schweitzer


Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. ~Eleanor Roosevelt


Happiness is a direction, not a place. ~Sydney J. Harris


Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important. ~Janet Lane


A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour. ~Author Unknown


If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~Dalai Lama


Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower. ~Author Unknown


There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. ~Lady Blessington


The best vitamin to be a happy person is B1. ~Author Unknown


A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. ~Bernard de Fontenelle


Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness? ~Yevgeny Zamyatin


A happy thought is like a seed that sows positivity for all to reap. ~Miriam Muhammad


Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. ~Immanuel Kant


Man must search for what is right, and let happiness come on its own. ~Johann Pestalozzi


He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. ~Henry Ward Beecher


If you search the world for happiness, you may find it in the end, for the world is round and will lead you back to your door. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. ~Sigmund Freud


There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. ~Salvador Dali



The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony. ~V.S. Pritchett


We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier. ~Walter Savage Landor


The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. ~George Bernard Shaw


Real elation is when you feel you could touch a star without standing on tiptoe. ~Doug Larson


The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. ~Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954


If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years. ~Bertrand Russell


The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. ~Doug Larson


Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world. Don't go through life creaking. ~H.W. Byles


What I'm looking for is a blessing that's not in disguise. ~Kitty O'Neill Collins


My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy. ~William Shakespeare


Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. ~John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, 1873


We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable. ~Joseph Roux


As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves. ~Andrew Delbanco


Happiness is the feeling you're feeling when you want to keep feeling it. ~Author Unknown


Joy is a flower that blooms when you do. ~Author Unknown


So long as we can lose any happiness, we possess some. ~Booth Tarkington


Jumping for joy is good exercise. ~Author Unknown


Seeking happiness, I passed many travelers headed in the opposite direction, seeking happiness. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


She thinks that happiness is a mat that sits on her doorway. ~Rob Thomas, "3 A.M."


Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy. ~Gretta Brooker Palmer


Happiness is a way station between too little and too much. ~Channing Pollock, Mr. Moneypenny


The happy have whole days,
and those they choose.
The unhappy have but hours,
and those they lose.
~Colley Cibber


When I do not walk in the clouds I walk as though I were lost. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up. ~Charles L. Morgan


Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. ~Iris Murdoch


Happiness is... usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. ~Thomas Szasz


When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content. ~Niccolo Machiavelli


You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness. ~Author Unknown


The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things. ~Ernest Dimnet


One joy scatters a hundred griefs. ~Chinese Proverb


We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. ~George Bernard Shaw, Candida, 1898


One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers. ~Eugene O'Neill


A man's as miserable as he thinks he is. ~Seneca


One filled with joy preaches without preaching. ~Mother Teresa


Misery is almost always the result of thinking. ~Joseph Joubert


My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate. ~Thornton Wilder


Be happy. It's one way of being wise. ~Colette


Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness. ~Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra


The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. ~William Saroyan


People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy. ~Anton Chekhov


Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. ~Douglas Jerrold


Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it. ~Don Herold


If you are not happy here and now, you never will be. ~Taisen Deshimaru


It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely. ~Georges Duhamel


If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden


The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. ~J.D. Salinger


There is no expert on what happiness is but many on what it might have been. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Eden is that old-fashioned house we dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode until we drive away.
~Emily Dickinson


Happiness is a function of accepting what is. ~Werner Erhard


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


Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind. ~John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1863


Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. ~Joseph Addison


Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~Samuel Johnson


There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ~Freya Stark, The Journey's Echo


Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness - otherwise how would you know when you're happy? ~Leslie Caron


On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so. ~William R. Inge


To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956


Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ~Mahatma Gandhi


When you're really happy, the birds chirp and the sun shines even on cold dark winter nights - and flowers will bloom on a barren land. ~Grey Livingston


Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness. ~Don Marquis


If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French by Richard Howard


Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse. ~Sophocles


Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit. ~Hosea Ballou


To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. ~Charles Caleb Colton


Some pursue happiness, others create it. ~Author Unknown


The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. ~Epictetus


Gather the crumbs of happiness and they will make you a loaf of contentment. ~Author Unknown


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


Happiness is the natural flower of duty. ~Phillips Brooks


But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~Albert Camus


Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind. ~Thomas Jefferson


We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. ~Charles Kingsley


You need to learn to be happy by nature, because you'll seldom have the chance to be happy by circumstance. ~Lavetta Sue Wegman


It is a comely fashion to be glad; Joy is the grace we say to God. ~Jean Ingelow


If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. ~W. Beran Wolfe


You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Albert Camus


Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other. ~Norman Bradburn


If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time. ~Josh Billings


Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it. ~William Feather


Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill. ~Johnny Carson


I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. ~J.D. Salinger


Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld


Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust


For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. ~Author Unknown


To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness


Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. ~Mildred Barthel


[U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental. ~Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, 1829


Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. ~Robert Frost


The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. ~Author Unknown


Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. ~Margaret Lee Runbeck


Many people are extremely happy, but are absolutely worthless to society. ~Charles Gow


All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière


Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve. ~Robert S. Lynd


I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. ~Abd-El-Raham


The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it. ~C.P. Snow


Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary