Quotes About Happiness

Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don't find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings you the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run.

Sometimes we get wrong notions, we think we have to be in a luxurious house, in a large city, with a new car in order to be happy. Happiness isn't there. Happiness isn't in a new car, it isn't in a new and luxurious apartment. Happiness isn't in banks and stocks. Happiness is where you make it, it's up to you. It comes from within, it doesn't come from things.

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage. Imagine how happy I felt when I got relief from bladder pressure. How long did that happiness last?

If you pursue happiness, you are an ordinary person. If happiness pursues you, you are an extraordinary person. Do not chase happiness; let it chase you.

While it is all very well to distinguish happiness that is transient from that which is lasting, between ephemeral and genuine happiness, the only happiness it is meaningful to speak of when a person is dying from thirst is access to water.

Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy.

If there ever was a pursuit which stultified itself by its very conditions, it is the pursuit of pleasure as the all-sufficing end of life. Happiness cannot come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done. To do that duty you need to have more than one trait. From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.

Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh?

A look filled with understanding, an accepting smile, a loving word, a meal shared in warmth and awareness are the things which create happiness in the present moment. By nourishing awareness in the present moment, you can avoid causing suffering to yourself and those around you. The way you look at others, your smile, and your small acts of caring can create happiness. True happiness does not depend on wealth or fame.

If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life.

For the real difference between happiness and joy is that one is grounded in this world, the other in eternity. Happiness cannot encompass suffering and evil. Joy can. Happiness depends on the present. Joy leaps into the future and triumphantly creates a new present out of it.

Genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others happiness.

The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others.

In the height of thy prosperity expect adversity, but fear it not. If it come not, thou art the more sweetly possessed of the happiness thou hast, and the more strongly confirmed. If it come, thou art the more gently dispossessed of the happiness thou hadst, and the more firmly prepared.

Reason shows me that if my happiness is desirable and good, the equal happiness of any other person must be equally desirable.

Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in terms of work or of enjoyment.

People assume that happiness stems from collecting things outside of yourself, whereas true happiness stems from removing things from inside of yourself

As one needs happiness so have I needed love; that is the deepest need of the human spirit. And as I love you utterly, so have you now become the whole world of my spirit. It is beside and beyond anything that you can ever do for me; it lies in what you are, dear love - to me so infinitely lovely that to be near you, to see you, hear you, is now the only happiness, the only life, I know.

The fact that there is always a positive side to life is the one thing that gives me a lot of happiness. This world is not perfect. There are problems. But things like happiness and unhappiness are relative. Realizing this gives you hope.

Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself

And whether this happiness lasted a hundred seconds or ten minutes, it was so far removed from time that it resembled every other genuine happiness as completely as one fluttering blue lycaenid butterfly resembles another.

It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.

Happiness does not exist as an isolated quality, nor does it conform to a single fixed pattern. Happiness is something that breathes and lives in the relationships between one person and another.

So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled.

When you SEEK HAPPINESS for yourself, it will always elude you. When you seek happiness for OTHERS, you will find it yourself.

Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

I say all the time that if you really want to feel alive, it's not through striving for yourself. If you really want to feel alive, it's not through trying to get more things or get more success or climbing a corporate ladder or getting to the top. Because, once you get there, you realize that you don't really find happiness in that. If you want to feel alive and if you want to feel peace and happiness, give your life away. Do something that is outside of yourself for someone else. I think that's the way to truly feel alive.

You have to believe in happiness, or happiness never comes.

In all human love it must be realized that every man promises a woman, and every woman promises a man that which only God alone can give, namely, perfect happiness. One of the reasons why so many marriages are shipwrecked is because as the young couple leave the altar, they fail to realize that human feelings tire and the enthusiasm of the honeymoon is not the same as the more solid happiness of enduring human love. One of the greatest trials of marriage is the absence of solitude. In the first moments of human love, one does not see the little hidden deformities which later on appear.

Your perspective is vital to your happiness. Some, blind to the bountiful opportunities around them, live lives of sadness and despair with brief moments of joy. Be alive to the abundant potential that surrounds you so that you live a life of peace and happiness with periods of challenging growth.

If a human being is filled with happiness and positivity, this is what they radiate out into the world. We each affect our environment and that collective consciousness. The more people who are diving within and transcending and are getting that happiness and positivity, the better the world will be.

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

There is something infinitely better than happily-ever-after. There is happiness. Happiness is a living, dynamic thing, Eve, and has to be worked on every moment for the rest of our lives. It is a far more exciting prospect than that silly static idea of a happily-ever-after. Would you not agree?" - Aidan Bedwyn

Happiness will come through the practice of yoga and Buddhism, that happiness is not something you will lose at the end of this lifetime. It will stay with you.

Personally, I've never had it as a goal in life to be happy. Seems impossible to achieve. Even the Declaration of Independence seems to acknowledge this. They talk about the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself.

Sometimes I think it's easier to think about being happier, for what ever that means to you then worrying about what is happiness and what would life be if I finally achieved this ultimate happiness?

Happiness pursued eludes, happiness given returns.

Happiness of heart can never be measured out and bundled up, it's intangible. We keep running after it, grasping for it, and the heat of our running so seldom brings it closer. But now and then there may be a moment. We look at something and know it is good and beautiful. Those moments are happiness.

I thought about how easily we are all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life.

... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.

What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?" Grandeur has but little," said Elinor, "but wealth has much to do with it." Elinor, for shame!" Said Marianne. "Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.

God has created all things for good; all things for their greatest good; everything for its own good. What is the good of one is not the good of another; what makes one man happy would make another unhappy. God has determined, unless I interfere with His plan, that I should reach that which will be my greatest happiness. He looks on me individually, He calls me by my name, He knows what I can do, what I can best be, what is my greatest happiness, and He means to give it me.

Happiness is the pleasantest of emotions; because of this, it is the most dangerous. Having once felt happiness, one will do anything to maintain it, and losing it, one will grieve.

True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in You, O God, who are the truth... Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.

The majority of human beings do not turn to God because they have not enough happiness but because happiness is not enough.

My aim in life isn't so much the pursuit of happiness as the happiness of pursuit.

I just think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness. If somebody walks in the room and they're drop-dead gorgeous and sexy, it's really fun to look at. But if someone is giving of their spirit and they make you laugh and feel good, that's a whole other level of beauty.

These days, in our materialistic culture, many people are led to believe that money is the ultimate source of happiness. Consequently, when they don’t have enough of it they feel let down. Therefore, it is important to let people know that they have the source of contentment and happiness within themselves, and that it is related to nurturing our natural inner values.