Quotes About Happiness

Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith.

A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Just because you're satisfied one moment - saying yes, it's a good meal, makes me happy - well, that's not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven't really experienced ups and downs yet. I'm not exactly sure what happiness even means. I don't know if I personally could define it.

One Dilbert Blog reader noted that current research shows that happiness causes success more than success causes happiness. That makes sense to me. There's plenty of research about people having a baseline of happiness that doesn't vary much with circumstances. And given that happy people are typically optimistic, energetic, and fun to work with, I can see how happiness would lead to success.

This philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man has been sort-of covered over with evangelical terms and biblical doctrine - until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist and ... everything is for the happiness of man - and I submit to you that this is unchristian.

The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man’s real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man’s search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end.

Why are you chasing your tail so?" Said the kitten, "I have learned that the best thing for a cat is happiness, and that happiness is my tail. Therefore, I am chasing it: and when I catch it. I shall have happiness." Said the cat, "My son, I, too, have paid attention to the problems of the universe. I, too, have judged that happiness is in my tail. But, I have noticed that whenever I chase it, it keeps running away from me, and when I go about my business, it just seems to come after me wherever I go.

Real happiness is not dependent on external things. The pond is fed from within. The kind of happiness that stays with you is the happiness that springs from inward thoughts and emotions. You must cultivate your mind if you wish to achieve enduring happiness.

Nothing can make you happier than you are. All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.

Happiness--a small-scale, endearing, harmonious happiness--surely dwelt here beneath the low-powered lamps in the tiny rooms of these houses. A small-scale happiness and a modest harmony: let a man cry out, let him rage, let him howl with grief with all the power of which he was capable, what more than these could he ever hope to gain in this life?

I’m constantly in doubt about what I’m doing, I’m constantly tortured, and that’s why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies. I’m not striving for happiness, I’m trying to get some work done. And sometimes the best work is done under doubt. Constant rethinking, and reevaluating what you’re doing, working and working until you feel it’s finished. And that’s an interesting point too, that you’ve got to know when to stop. Sometimes there’s a magical moment when everything comes together.

Over the past year I'vediscovered if you keep on giving and giving, you end up losing yourself. I think that learning to give and receive is the trick. Perfect happiness is also a feeling, and the most amazing thing is that we were all born with the gift to make it happen in a heartbeat. Putting on certainmusic, reading something can make us feel a certain way. I think the key to happiness is allowing ourselves to not feel bad or guilty for feeling it, and letting it be contagious. And to not be dependent on other people to create your own happiness.

We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.

Happiness is the result of inner maturity. It depends on us alone, and requires patient work, carried out from day to day. Happiness must be built, and this requires time and effort. In the long term, happiness and unhappiness are therefore a way of being, or a life skill.

The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as a right of all Americans, as well as on the self-improvement shelves of every American bookstore. Yet the scientific evidence makes it seem unlikely that you can change your level of happiness in any sustainable way. It suggests that we each have a fixed range for happiness just as we do for weight. And just as dieters almost always regain the weight they lose, sad people don't become lastingly happy, and happy people don't become lastingly sad.

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.

Material objects give rise to physical happiness, while spiritual development gives rise to mental happiness. Since we experience both physical and mental happiness, we need both material and spiritual development. This is why, for our own good and that of society we need to balance material progress with inner development.

All moments of joy include an element of happiness. But not all moments of happiness include joy. Happiness often comes from drive reduction-avoidance of pain or the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake. The essence of joy, on the other hand, is spirit.

Most persons have but a very moderate capacity of happiness. Expecting...in marriage a far greater degree of happiness than they commonly find, and knowing not that the fault is in their own scanty capability of happiness.

It is the pursuit of happiness that brings us happiness, and not the happiness achieved.

It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.

But the reason we have this built-in desire for happiness is because we're created in God's image. He wired us to want to be happy. Unfortunately, we sometimes disassociate happiness from its true source, which is God Himself. Satan tempts us by offering us happiness, because he knows that's what we want. But he offers it in the wrong places, at the wrong times, and in the wrong things.

The mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within.

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

Lenten practices of giving up pleasures are good reminders that the purpose of life is not pleasure. The purpose of life is to attain to perfect life, all truth and undying ecstatic love - which is the definition of God. In pursuing that goal we find happiness. Pleasure is not the purpose of anything; pleasure is a by-product resulting from doing something that is good. One of the best ways to get happiness and pleasure out of life is to ask ourselves, 'How can I please God?' and, 'Why am I not better?' It is the pleasure-seeker who is bored, for all pleasures diminish with repetition.

External circumstances can contribute to one's happiness and well-being, but ultimately happiness and suffering depend on the mind.

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.

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.

As we got more interested in time management and productivity, we lost the individual, and with that individual loss, we lost happiness as well. So I think the world has actually been malnourished as we've focused so much on productivity and ignored happiness and meaning to our own detriment.

The mind is the source of happiness and unhappiness by what it chooses to compare the experience with. If it chooses to compare it to something worse then it will create happiness, gratitude and pride but if it chooses to compare it to something better then it will create unhappiness, bitterness and envy.

If you let go a little you will have a little happiness. If you let go a lot you will have a lot of happiness. If you let go completely you will be free.

when your happiness is someone else's happiness, that is love

Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth.

There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, and whatever throws this cycle out of balance – poverty and misery where exhaustion is followed by wretchedness instead of regeneration, or great riches and an entirely effortless life where boredom takes the place of exhaustion and where the mills of necessity, of consumption and digestion, grind an impotent human body mercilessly and barrenly to death – ruins the elemental happiness that comes from being alive.

Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.

I've worked with farmers in Zimbabwe who've lost their lands. I've worked with people in Venezuela, under threat of kidnappings, whose external world is unstable. But they have very strong social connections with their family and friends. And as a result, they're able to maintain a greater level of happiness and optimism than I've seen from bankers, consultants, or salespeople who are on the road all the time, who follow jobs separated from their families, and, as a result, find themselves missing out on the happiness that comes from those very connections that they severed.

I am now experiencing perfect health, abundant prosperity and complete and utter happiness. This is true because the world is full of charming people who now lovingly help me in every way. I am now coming into an innumerable company of angels. I am now living a delightful, interesting and satisfying life of the most widely useful kind. Because of my own increased health, wealth and happiness, I am now able to help others live a delightful, interesting and satisfying life of the most widely useful kind, my good - our good - is universal.

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 is self-generated. It depends on one's attitude of mind. The basis of happiness, is the simple fact that the deepest reality of our own nature is ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new joy.

Because in the midst of happiness there is always a seed of unhappiness; it consumes itself like fire--it can't burn forever, sooner or later it must die; and this presentiment of the end destroys my happiness when it is at is height.

Happiness is the struggle towards a summit and, when it is attained, it is happiness to glimpse new summits on the other side.

Happiness isn't found in some finite checklist of goals that we can diligently complete and then coast. It's how we live our lives in the process. That's why the four pillars of happiness are faith, family, community and meaningful work. Those are priorities we have to keep investing in.

Happiness does not come from external things as we're really taught as children. It doesn't come from Santa Claus. Happiness is from within your mind. Just realizing that will change your whole life.

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

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?

Memory is a tenuous thing. . . . flickering glimpses, blue and white, like ancient, decomposing 16mm film. Happiness escapes me there, where faces are vague and yesterday seems to come tied up in ribbons of pain. Happiness? I look for it intead in today, where memory is something I can still touch, still rely on. I find it in the smiles of new friends, the hope blossoming inside. My happiest memories have no place in the past; they are those I have yet to create.

Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.

Joy passed, but happiness never completely disappeared; a touch of it would always remain to remind one it had been there. It was happiness that made one smile, then.