quotations about Happiness
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
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
Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.
EPICTETUS
The Art of Living
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
Happiness is a Moving Target.
DON WICKER
Happiness Is a Moving Target
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
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
To be happy, even to conceive happiness, you must be reasonable or ... you must be tamed. You must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passions and learned your place in the world.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Egotism in German Philosophy
Perhaps happiness is, was, and ever shall be the ultimate human end in every time and place.
DARRIN M. MCMAHON
Happiness: A History
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 is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
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
To be conscious of happiness is to hear Nemesis rapping at the portals.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
What is the worth of anything,
But for the happiness 'twill bring?
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE
Learning
To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
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
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