quotations about Happiness
Happiness is less regulated by external circumstances than inward enjoyment. Whoever is happy in the satisfaction of himself feels imperturbable felicity; but he, who trusts entirely to the world for the disposition of his peace, must inevitably participate [in] many privations and disappointments.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Happy people die whole, they are all dissolved in a moment, they have had what they wanted.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"Post Mortem"
All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one pressed in tin ...
Each carries the same water.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Late Self-Portrait By Rembrandt"
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
Captain Brassbound's Conversion
That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continu'st such, owe to thy self,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
We live in a feel-good society, a culture thoroughly obsessed with finding happiness. And what does that society tell us to do? To eliminate "negative" feelings and accumulate "positive" ones in their place. It's a nice theory, and on the surface it seems to make sense. After all, who wants to have unpleasant feelings. But here's the catch: the things we generally value most in life bring with them a whole range of feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant. For example, in an intimate long-term relationship, although you will experience wonderful feelings such as love and joy, you will also inevitably experience disappointment and frustration.... It's pretty well impossible to create a better life if you're not prepared to have some uncomfortable feelings.
RUSS HARRIS
The Happiness Trap
Happiness can not come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech at Groton, May 24, 1904
Happiness is sitting down to watch some slides of your neighbor's vacation and finding out that he spent two weeks in a nudist colony.
JOHNNY CARSON
Happiness Is a Dry Martini
I believe that happiness can be found. If I thought otherwise, I should be silent and not make unhappiness the more bitter by discussing it.
KARL HILTY
Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life
It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
But for now, happiness throws stones.
It guards itself.
I wait.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle!
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
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
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
Happiness never becomes a habit.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people.... Conflicts in relationships--having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse--is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Heart of the Matter