Happy Quotes
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but
often we look so long at the closed door that we do not
see the one which has been opened for us.....Helen Keller.
Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy,
much the greatest is the possession of friendship....Epicurus.
People are just as happy as they make
up their minds to be....Abraham Lincoln.
Nobody really cares if you're miserable,
so you might as well be happy....Cythina Nelms.
Happiness is like a butterfly while when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp, but which if you
will sit down quietly, may alight upon you....Unknown.
Happiness held is a seed;
shared it's a flower....Unknown.
A really happy person can enjoy the scenery
even when they have to take a detour....Unknown.
Be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the
charming gardens who make our souls blossom....Unknown.
Happiness is not a destination.
It is a method of life....Burton Hills.
Happiness isn't getting what you want,
it's wanting what you've got....Garth Brooks.
Happiness is never right around the corner.
Instead, it always exists in the present moment.
The key to perpetual happiness is learning to
recognize and enjoy that moment....Tim Barchie.
Some people travel a million miles in search of something
they'll never find or doesn't exist; and then there are those
who have found love and happiness without having traveled
a single step, for they have found God....Mario Maluje.
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.
They are but trifles, to be sure but, scattered along life's
pathway, the good they do is inconceivable....Unknown.
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the
best of everything; they just make the most of
everything that comes along their way....Unknown.
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the
object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never
attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that
we have caught happiness without dreaming of it....Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Happiness is not an absence of problems; but the
ability to deal with them....H. Jackson Brown.
We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest
peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but
of balance and order and rhythm and harmony....Thomas Merton.
Happiness is knowing that you do not
necessarily require happiness....William Saroyan.
Happiness is what happens to us when we
try to make someone else happy....Unknown.
Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving
an impact on people, brings happiness....Rabbi Harold Kushner.
I've learned from experience that the greater part
of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions
and not on our circumstances....Martha Washington.
Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others,
you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness
that you are able to give....Eleanor Roosevelt.
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances,
but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes....Hugh Downs.
All who would win joy, must share it;
happiness was born a twin....Lord Byron.
Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth...Happiness
comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness
to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we
must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it....John Templeton.
Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you
have; it depends solely upon what you think....Dale Carnegie.
Each today, well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness
and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look, therefore, to this
one day, for it and it alone is life....Sanskrit Poem.
Happiness is knowin' you've done a good job, whether it's
professional or for another person....Elvis Presley.
See to do good, and you will find that happiness
will run after you....James Freeman Clarke.
To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy...is to set our
own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition
circumstances instead of being conditioned by them....Ralph Waldo Emerson.
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty
seconds of happiness....Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Happiness is a by-product. You cannot
pursue it by itself....Samuel Levenson.
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but
simply growth, We are happy when we are growing....William Butler Yeats.
Happiness is not a goal; it is a
by-product....Eleanor Roosevelt.
Happiness is the realization of God in the heart. Happiness is
the result of praise and thanksgiving, of faith, of acceptance;
a quiet tranquil realization of the love of God....White Eagle.
Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of
the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the
moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms....Ding Ling.
Happiness...it lies in the joy of achievement, in the
thrill of creative effort....Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
It is not how much we have, but how much we
enjoy, that makes happiness....Charles Spurgeon.
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true
happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose....Helen Keller.
Success is getting what you want.
Happiness is wanting what you get....B. R. Hayden.
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 Koenig.
In our daily lives, we must see that it is
not happiness that makes us grateful, but the
gratefulness that makes us happy....Albert Clarke.
Happiness depends upon ourselves....Aristotle.
Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so
lives as to make happiness impossible....St. Augustine.
He who binds to himself a joy does the winged life
destroy; but he who kisses the joy as it files
lives in eternity's sunrise....William Blake.
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes
only if you generously consent to share them....Albert Camus.
Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of
life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but
leads none of us by the same route....Charles Caleb Colton.
Of mortals there is no one who is happy. If wealth
flows in upon one, one may be perhaps luckier than
one's neighbor, but still not happy....Euripedes.
A great obstacle to happiness is to
anticipate too great a happiness....Fontenelle.
What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from
the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have
been dammed up to a high degree....Sigmund Freud.
No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure
of his friend till he is unhappy....Thomas Fuller.
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by
different means, and so make for themselves different
modes of life and forms of government....Aristotle.
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he
feels that happiness is his indisputable right....Helen Keller.
It is better to be happy for a moment and be
burned up with beauty than to live a long time
and be bored all the while....Don Marquis.
Even if happiness forgets you a little bit,
never completely forget about it....Jacques Prévert.
The happy man is not he who seems thus to others,
but who seems thus to himself....Publilius Syrus.
Italy, and the spring and first love all together should
suffice to make the gloomiest person happy....Bertrand Russell.
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness;
happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the
picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is,
satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted....George Santayana.
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but
one -- keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy....Mark Twain.
When I was a child people simply looked about them and were
moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas,
bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what
they see and hear makes them unutterably sad....E. B. White.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood....Tom Robbins.
To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with
affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge,
his future with hope, and his stomach with food....Frederick E. Crane.
If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every
experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous
and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be....John R. Miller.
Happiness isn't about what happens to us -- it's about how we perceive what
happens to us. It's the knack of finding a positive for every negative,
and viewing a setback as a challenge. If we can just stop wishing for what
we don't have, and start enjoying what we do have, our lives can be richer;
more fulfilled -- and happier. The time to be happy is now....Lynn Peters.
You need to learn to be happy by nature, because you'll seldom
have the chance to be happy by circumstance....Lavetta Sue Wegman.
The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who
will have sought and found how to serve....Albert Schweitzer.
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.
The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not the superficial
happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the happiness and
contentment that fills the soul even in the midst of the most distressing
circumstances and the most bitter environment. It is the kind of happiness
that grins when things go wrong and smiles through the tears. The happiness
for which our souls ache is one undisturbed by success or failure, one
which will root deeply inside us and give inward relaxation, peace, and
contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be. That kind
of happiness stands in need of no outward stimulus....Billy Graham.
To be able to find joy in another's joy: that
is the secret of happiness....George Bernanos.
Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect, it just
means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections....Unknown.
The U.S. Constitution Doesn't Guarantee happiness, only the pursuit
of it. You have to catch up with it yourself....Benjamin Franklin.
A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward
and discovers that the source is within him....Soren Kierkegaard.
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this
or that, but hope and enterprise and change....Bertrand Russell.
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared....Buddha.
Each of us owes it to our spouse, our children, our friends,
to be as happy as we can be. And if you don't believe me, ask a
child what it's like to grow up with an unhappy parent, or ask
parents what they suffer if they have an unhappy child....Dennis Prager.
It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you
are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or
unhappy. It is what you think about....Dale Carnegie.
Happiness is like a kiss. You must share
it to enjoy it....Bernard Meltzer.
As we cultivate peace and happiness in ourselves, we also
nourish peace and happiness in those we love....Thich Nhat Hanh.
Happiness is not an accident. Nor is it something you
wish for. Happiness is something you design....Jim Rohn.
It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a
conscious effort to live useful lives. Their happiness...is
not a shallow exhilaration where life is one continuous intoxicating
party. Rather, their happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that
comes when they believe their lives have meaning and that they are
making a difference for good in the world....Ernest Fitzgerald.
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance,
the wise grows it under his feet....James Oppenheim.
Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to
do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing....George Sheehan.
One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything.
Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts
but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries
and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened
rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars
and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange
labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do
that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom....Gerald Brenan.
Happy is he who dares courageously to defend what he loves....Ovid.
Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that
shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces
power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to
ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon
the direction in which that train of thought is going....Laurence J. Peter.
Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination
to be happy under all outward circumstances....J. Donald Walters.
Happiness doesn't depend on the actual number of blessings we manage to
scratch from life, only our attitude towards them....Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Be a good human being, a warm-hearted affectionate person.
That is my fundamental belief. Having a sense of caring, a feeling
of compassion will bring happiness of peace of mind to oneself
and automatically create a positive atmosphere....Dalai Lama.
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions -- the
little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind
look or heartfelt compliment....Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Happiness is a function of accepting what is....Werner Erhard.
Joy is the happiness of love -- love aware of its own inner happiness.
Pleasure comes from without, and joy comes from within, and it is,
therefore, within reach of everyone in the world....Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
The time to be happy is now. The way to be
happy is to make others so....Robert Ingersoll.
Happiness does not depend on outward things,
but on the way we see them....Leo Tolstoy.
If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and
happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This
is the most basic kind of peace work....Thich Nhat Hanh.
Man is the artificer of his own happiness....Henry David Thoreau.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness
depend upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted
the very best plan for living happily....Plato.
Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves.
It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the
heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are....John B. Sheerin.
True happiness is...to enjoy the present,
without anxious dependence upon the future....Seneca.
Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all,
but most of us look the other way and lose it....Mark Twain.
The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging
to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to
change its form without being disappointed by the change; for happiness,
like a child, must be allowed to grow up....Charles Langbridge Morgan.
The world is full of people looking for spectacular
happiness while they snub contentment....Doug Larson.
Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the
fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we
want now for what we want eventually....Stephen Covey.
We always have enough to be happy if we are enjoying what we do
have -- and not worrying about what we don't have....Ken Keyes, Jr.
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life,
the whole aim and end of human existence....Aristotle.
...true happiness stems from a quality within ourselves, from a
way of thinking of life. Of all the millions of words written on
happiness, this is the oldest and most enduring truth. If the
principles of contentment are not within us, no material success,
no pleasures or possessions, can make us happy....Lillian Eichler Watson.
Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and
often when our affection seems wounded it is is only our
vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to
love again -- this is the brave and happy life....J.E. Buchrose.
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty
of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous
benefits upon the world....Robert Louis Stevenson.
It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man
is willing to be what he is....Desiderius Erasmus.
People who postpone happiness are like children who
try chasing rainbows in an effort to find the pot of
gold at the rainbows end...Your life will never be
fulfilled until you are happy here and now....Ken Keyes, Jr.
The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your
mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill
your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of
others. Do as you would be done by....Norman Vincent Peale.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion....Dalai Lama.
To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be
needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the
nearest we can come to happiness....Mary Roberts Rinehart.
Don't mistake pleasure for happiness.
They're a different breed of dog....Josh Billings.
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do,
something to love, and something to hope for....Joseph Addison.
The habit of being uniformly considerate toward others
will bring increased happiness to you....Grenville Kleoser.
The measure of our future success and happiness will not be the quality
of the cards we are dealt by unseen hands, but the poise and wisdom
with which we play them. "Choose to play each hand to the best
of your ability without wasting the time or energy it takes to complain
about either the cards or the dealer or the often unfair rules of the
game." Play both the winning and the losing hands as best you can,
then fold the cards and ante up for the next deal!....Joe Klock.
Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit,
you can achieve a permanently happy spirit....Norman Vincent Peale.
Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness
in our lives: where we focus our attention....Greg Anderson.
The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the
most important part of happiness. We need to be careful, upon achieving
happiness, not to lose the virtues which have produced it....Harry Harrison.
It seems to me that the secret of true happiness in life is to know
what you are and then be content to be that, in style, head up and
proud, and not yearn to be something else....Robert Anson Heinlein.
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.
No reward coming after the event can compare with the
sweet reward that went with it....Maurice Maeterlinck.
Happiness consists in activity. It is a
running steam, not a stagnant pool....John Mason Good.
Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness
has never danced in the rain....Unknown.
Happiness is a choice that
requires effort at times....Unknown.
Youth is happy because it has the ability
to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability
to see beauty never grows old....Franz Kafka.
Unless your heart, your soul, and your whole being are
behind every decision you make, the words from your mouth
will be empty, and each action will be meaningless. Truth
and confidence are the roots of happiness....Kathleen Pedersen.
Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the
afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement
of a difficult task that demanded our best....Theodore I. Rubin.
The happiest people are those who think the most interesting
thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental
development, who love good music, good books, good pictures,
good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in
the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they
are the cause of happiness in others....William Lyon Phelphs.
Men can only be when they do not assume that
the object of life is happiness....George Orwell.
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of
your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take
care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to
virtue and reasonable nature....Marcus Aurelius.
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is
here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose we know not,
though sometimes sense it. But we know from daily life that
we exist for other people first of all for whose smiles
and well-being our own happiness depends....Albert Einstein.
True happiness is…to enjoy the present,
without anxious dependence upon the future....Seneca.
The happiest person is the person who thinks
the most interesting thoughts....Timothy Dwight.
Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it
will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention
to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing up
against your legs and jumping into your lap....William Bennett.
It is by studying little things that we attain
the great knowledge of having as little misery and
as much happiness as possible....Samuel Johnson.
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of
darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning
if it were not balanced by sadness....Carl Jung.
Previous Quote Collection Back to Quote Index Next Quote Collection