quotations about Happiness
I found myself in possession of happiness once more, and the evils I had lately suffered, gave me uncommon relish for it.
ETHAN ALLEN
A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity
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
To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Dream Play
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
ALBERT CAMUS
Caligula
A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
The Architecture of Happiness
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
Happiness--like love--is itself an attitude.
STEPHANIE DOWRICK
Choosing Happiness
The belief that happiness has to be deserved has led to centuries of pain, guilt, and deception. So firmly have we clung to this single, illusory belief that we've almost forgotten the real truth about happiness. So busy are we trying to deserve happiness that we no longer have much time for ideas such as: Happiness is natural, happiness is a birthright, happiness is free, happiness is a choice, happiness is within, and happiness is being. The moment you believe that happiness has to be deserved, you must toil forevermore.
ROBERT HOLDEN
Happiness Now: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast
There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
RENé DESCARTES
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
Happiness is variously associated by different people with a multiplicity of conscious states, such as calm contentment, ecstasy, hilarity, elation, and others. These states all have some claim to be parts or aspects of happiness.... However, they certainly don't all obtain together, and some of them, once again, seem incompatible with each other--ecstasy and calm contentment, for instance.... It may be that happiness is one of those concepts of "folk psychology" that doesn't designate any psychological state, and can't have any explication in terms of the kind of science that tries to discover general laws or regularities.
NICHOLAS P. WHITE
A Brief History of Happiness
Most folks are just about as happy as they've made up their minds to be.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Maybe you have to wait for happiness. Maybe the rest is only words.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
The Writing Life
Worldly happiness is like a golden palace, but with no entrance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The happy man is he who turns his soul
Unto the light of joys that he can find;
And pays each day its just demand of toll,
But shuts the future troubles from his mind.
EDGAR GUEST
"The Present"
One secret to long-term happiness is surrounding yourself with others who are also happy.
DEEP PATEL
"20 Secrets to Living a Happier Life", Entrepreneur, July 2, 2018
Happiness is when you see your husband's old girlfriend and she's fatter than you.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
Do not procrastinate happiness. Enjoy every moment and find peace with yourself.
ANNET KATUSIIME
"What defines your happiness?", Daily Monitor, July 3, 2018
Happiness ... does not consist in the gratification of desires, nor in that freedom from care, that imaginary state of repose, to which most men look so anxiously forward, and with the prospect of which their labors are lightened, but which is more languid, irksome, and insupportable than all the toils of active life. True, the objects we pursue with so much ardor are insignificant in themselves, and never fulfil our extravagant expectations; but this by no means proves them unworthy of pursuit. Properly to estimate their value, we must take into view all the pleasurable emotions they awaken prior to attainment.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
Hints on Success in Life
So long as men strive for their individual happiness only, so long they shall strive for it in vain, because they strive for something which does not exist. When one will strive for all and all for one, then, and then only, general happiness will be possible. Until then men will remain savages, in constant war with each other, like fools destroying the very house that shelters them.
NORBERT LAFAYETTE SAVAY
Emancipation