quotations about Happiness
Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Happiness is a Moving Target.
DON WICKER
Happiness Is a Moving Target
The future seems a little gloomy! Go to bed early, sleep well, eat moderately at breakfast; the future looks brighter. The world's outlook may not have changed, but our capacity for dealing with it has. Happiness, or unhappiness, depends to some extent on external conditions, but also, and in most cases chiefly, on our own physical and mental powers. Some people would be discontented in Paradise, others ... are cheerful in a graveyard.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Garden of Eden
If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
The Architecture of Happiness
Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Human nature, at its best, had always been based on a deep heroic restlessness, on wanting something--something else, something more, whether it be true love or a glimpse just beyond the horizon. It was the promise of happiness, not the attainment of it, that had driven the entire engine, the folly and glory of who we are.
WILL FERGUSON
Happiness
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
AYN RAND
Anthem
Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Perhaps happiness is, was, and ever shall be the ultimate human end in every time and place.
DARRIN M. MCMAHON
Happiness: A History
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
There is even evidence happiness is contagious, so happier people help others around them to become happier, too.
JOSEPH FRENCH
"Speak health, hope, happiness to your children", IndeOnline, June 30, 2018
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
Worldly happiness is like a golden palace, but with no entrance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Huxley and God: Essays
If I think that happiness is possible, I know all too well its hidden nature--and by what wretched paradox, instead of being an excess that would elevate us in dignity, it is a numbness we are only aware of afterward.
ALBERT CAMUS
letter, Jun. 18, 1938
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
What is the worth of anything,
But for the happiness 'twill bring?
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE
Learning
As the sea is beautiful not only in calm but also in storm, so is happiness found not only in peace but also in strife.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
At the heart of happiness lies peace. It is the last and the highest attainment of the soul.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness