Quotes About Happiness

When you're Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don't need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.

Lack of understanding of the true nature of happiness, it seems to me, is the principal reason why people inflict sufferings on others. They think either that the other's pain may somehow be a cause of happiness for themselves or that their own happiness is more important, regardless of what pain it may cause. But this is shortsighted. No one truly benefits from causing harm to another sentient being. . . . . In the long run causing others misery and infringing their rights to peace and happiness result in anxiety, fear, and suspicion within oneself.

Why do men learn through pain and suffering, and not through pleasure and happiness? Very simply, because pleasure and happiness accustom one to satisfaction with the things given in this world, whereas pain and suffering drive one to seek a more profound happiness beyond the limitations of this world.

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.

After every happiness comes misery; they may be far apart or near. The more advanced the soul, the more quickly does one follow the other. What we want is neither happiness nor misery. Both make us forget our true nature; both are chains-one iron, one gold; behind both is the Atman, who knows neither happiness nor misery. These are states, and states must ever change; but the nature of the Atman is bliss, peace, unchanging. We have not to get it, we have it; only wash away the dross and see it.

In all of my looking at happiness, one thing I noticed right away is that the opposite of happiness isn't unhappiness or even depression, it's anxiety. It is something that can constantly block our happiness, or our chance to reach that sort of meditative state in our work or our home lives.

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.

We’ve all heard of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In contrast, I realized, happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience we must: anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.

She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

Happiness can come in a single moment. And in a single moment it can go again. But a single moment does not create it. Happiness is created through countless choices made and then made again throughout a lifetime. You are its host as well as its guest. You give it form, shape, individuality, texture, tone. And what it allows you to give can change your world. Happiness can be stillness. But it isn't still. It wraps, enchants, heals, consoles, soothes, delights, calms, inspires and connects. It is on your face and in your body. It is in your life and being.

It is in the expectations of happiness that much of happiness itself is found. And it takes courage to expect happiness.

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.

Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour. Happiness is a direction, not a place.

Most people think happiness comes from experiences in the world. The fulfillment of desire causes a type of happiness. But as soon as they experience passes, the happiness passes.

Most people keep waiting on happiness, putting off happiness until they're successful or until they achieve some goal, which means we limit both happiness and success. That formula doesn't work.

When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else. Some decide that happiness and glee are the same thing, they are not. When we choose happiness we accept the responsibility to lighten the load of someone else and to be a light on the path to another who may be walking in darkness.

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.

Is it not in the struggle to obtain knowledge that happiness exists? I am very ignorant, consequently the conditions of happiness are mine.

Life is Happiness. Happiness is the fact that I can do something right now.

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.

Man’s holiness is now his greatest happiness, and in heaven man’s greatest happiness will be his perfect holiness.

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.

Usually we try to figure out what we think would make us happy, and then try to make those things happen. But happiness isn't circumstance-de pendent. There are people who have every reason in the world to be happy who aren't. There are people with genuine problems who are. The key to happiness is the decision to be happy.

I did some more soul searching. I asked myself, "What do I want more than happiness?" and there was only one answer - the only thing that trumps happiness is love. Not the kind of love we are normally taught about, but the kind of unconditional love that is a deep inner state which doesn't depend on any person, situation or a romantic partner. That's how I define Love for No Reason: it's an inner state of love.

Lots of people look for happiness through sensations, whether it's through sex, the taste of food, the sound of music, the sensations of movies and plays, creating a certain environment in their home, and so on. Looking for happiness through sensations keeps you constantly searching for the next "fix" and for more varied sensations. Sensations become addictions, and nothing is ever enough.

Today, the law is a crazy quilt of provisions and clauses that very often have little to do with securing general happiness but instead are designed to secure the particular happiness of various advocacy groups, politicians and bureaucrats.

Of all human sentiments, enthusiasm creates the most happiness; it is the only sentiment in fact which gives real happiness, the only sentiment which can help us to bear our human destiny in any situation in which we may find ourselves.

Joy is the happiness of love - love aware of its own inner happiness. Pleasure comes from without, and joy comes from within, and it is, therefore, within reach of everyone in the world.

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.

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

Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing.

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.

That is truth. In that truth, there is real happiness. And there is nothing that could disturb that happiness.

Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living.

Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast." ~

The hour when you say, "What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!

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.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

The secret of happiness is simply this... your happiness does NOT depend on getting what you want.

Meditation is the short path to happiness. Meditation takes you beyond the desire-aversion operating system that offers very limited happiness and a great deal of frustration.

Some people CHASE happiness. And some people CHOOSE happiness.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

Your happiness is the most significant contribution that you could make. In your reaching for happiness, you are opening a vortex which makes you an avenue for the Well-being to flow through you. And anything that is your object of attention under those conditions, benefits by the infusion of your Well-being.

Real happiness is something most people never know. What we experience in deep meditation, that ecstasy is beyond what human beings call happiness

In the nature of our existence, we must act to achieve values. And in order to act appropriately, we need to value the beneficiary of our actions. In order to seek values, we must consider ourselves worthy of enjoying them. In order to fight for our happiness, we must consider ourselves worthy of happiness.

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.