quotations about Happiness
We are all travelling to one destination--happiness; but none are going by the same road.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
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 wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearnings after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Call no man happy till he is dead.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
There is a restless endeavour in the mind of man after Happiness. This appetite is wrought into the original frame of our nature, and exerts itself in all parts of the creation that are endued with any degree of thought or sense. But, as the human mind is dignified by a more comprehensive faculty than can be found in the inferior animals, it is natural for men not only to have an eye each to his own happiness, but also to endeavour to promote that of others.
GEORGE BERKELEY
The Works of George Berkeley
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
For no man lives, who always happy is.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
You have never seen ugliness in a happy face.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Beloved Vagabond
The best recipe for happiness and contentment I've seen is this: dig a big hole in the garden of your thoughts and put into it all your disillusions, disappointments, regrets, worries, troubles, doubts, and fears. Cover well with the earth of fruitfulness. Water it from the well of contentment. Sow on top the seeds of hope, courage, strength, patience, and love. Then when the time for gathering comes, may your harvest be a rich and fruitful one.
ZIG ZIGLAR
Staying Up
Happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to John Page, Jul. 15, 1763
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
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
That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Marble Faun
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
It seems the more we seek happiness, the more it eludes us. But despite our collective failure to achieve bliss, we continue to find its quest appealing, and the people who peddle pleasure make a lot of money off of it.
SUSIE MEISTER
"The Business of Happiness Is Booming but We're Still Miserable", The Observer, June 25, 2018
Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Nov. 13, 1712
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