quotations about Happiness
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
Lacon
What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
You have never seen ugliness in a happy face.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Beloved Vagabond
One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be “happy” is not included in the plan of “Creation.”
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
The most damaging erroneous belief about happiness is, of course, that happiness is somewhere else--that is, that it is not with you.
ROBERT HOLDEN
Happiness Now: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast
Past happiness augments present wretchedness.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
Call no man happy till he is dead.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
Your happiness is a one person job -- it begins and ends with you.
JONATHAN LOCKWOOD HUIE
100 Secrets for Living a Life You Love
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
If you ask a man how he is, he searches himself to find a pain to report. If he has nothing but happiness he hates to mention it, and says, "Oh, not half bad."
FRANK CRANE
"Hidden Happiness", Four Minute Essays
I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Mosquitoes
Happiness doesn't depend on how much you have to enjoy ... but how much you enjoy what you have!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Feb. 2, 1998
As to the desire for happiness, we find it is universal. That is one thing upon which all mankind are agreed.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
Happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, Thoughts
Regard this world as the place to sow seed for eternity, and after taking such a portion from this world as may give you strength to take the journey to the other world, turn away from whatever is more than this. Realize that the future world is the place for enjoyment and happiness which is eternal, and the land to behold the excellence and beauty of the Lord; and make it your purpose, divine and omniscient grace assisting you, never to cease from the pursuit of them, but to secure as your prey, the phoenix of felicity and happiness.
MOHAMMED AL-GHAZZALI
The Alchemy of Happiness
Gold, gold! It may not buy happiness, but it can buy you a better state of misery, that's for sure!
COUNT DUCKULA
"Ghostly Gold", Count Duckula
If you wish to be happy, think not of what is to come nor of that which you have no control over but rather of the now and of that which you are able to change.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr