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.

Happiness is sorrow; sorrow is happiness. There is happiness in difficulty; difficulty in happiness. Even though the ways we feel are different, they are not really different, in essence they are the same. This is the true understanding transmitted from Buddha to us.

People misunderstand happiness. They think it's the absence of trouble. That's not happiness, that's luck. Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble. No two people have the same trouble, or the same way of metabolizing it. Q.E.D. - No two happy people are happy in the same way. . . . Every day brilliant people, people smarter than I, wallow in safe tragedy and pessimism, shying from what really takes guts - recognizing how much courage and labor happiness demands.

Happiness is not something you have in your hands; it's something you carry in your heart. Happiness is one thing that multiplies by division. Happiness is that peculiar sensation you acquire when you are too busy to be miserable. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

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.

What I like about cooking is that, so long as you follow the recipe exactly, everything always turns out perfect. It’s too bad there’s no recipe for happiness. Happiness is more like pastry—which is to say that you can take pains to keep cool and not overwork the dough, but if you don’t have that certain light touch, your best efforts still fall flat. The work-around is to buy what you need. I’m talking about pastry, not happiness, although money does make things easier all around.

Happiness,... even the smallest happiness, is like a step out of Time, and the greatest happiness is sharing in Eternity.

The Christian is not superficial in any sense, but is fundamentally serious and fundamentally happy. You see, the joy of the Christian is a holy joy; the happiness of the Christian is a serious happiness. ... it is a solemn joy, it is a holy joy, it is a serious happiness; so that, though he is grave and sober-minded and serious, he is never cold and prohibitive.

Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.

If you do not feel deserving of happiness, consciously or subconsciously, or if you have accepted the idea that happiness is somehow wrong or cannot last, you will not respond appropriately when happiness comes knocking at your door in the form of romantic love. No matter how much you may have waited and cried, you will not welcome love when it arrives-you will find a way to sabotage it. What a challenge to resist this temptation! What an opportunity for true spiritual growth and transformation-to defy your negative feelings and honor the gift that life offers you!

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.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.

My effort here is to create bliss, not happiness. Happiness is worthless; it depends on unhappiness. Bliss is transcendence: one moves beyond the duality of being happy and unhappy. One watches both; happiness comes, one watches and does not become identified with it. One does not say, 'I am happy. Peace, it is wonderful.' One simply watches, one says, 'Yes, a white cloud passing.'

Do you want a world with . . . more joy and happiness? Then find your own joy and happiness and contribute to the joy and happiness of others.

Life isn't perfect. It's not supposed to be. We all make mistakes. You bash your head against the wall and you get hurt, but you walk away and make the best of it. And that's what makes it life, Brenna, not perfection. You'll never find happiness if you only expect to find a perfect life. Happiness is something we reach for while we try to learn from our disappointments.

The response that comes from chanting is in the form of bliss, or spiritual happiness, which is a much higher taste than any happiness found here in the material world. That's why I say that the more you do it, the more you don't want to stop, because it feels so nice and peaceful.

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

Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions. Vigilantly practice polite indifference to that which we can't control. Your happiness can only be found within.

The single most important principle I ever discovered is this: the goal or purpose of the Christian is precisely the pursuit of happiness - in God. The reason for this is that there is no greater way to glorify God than to find in Him the happiness that my soul so desperately craves.

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

Every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in like kind... what we sow is what we reap. And when we choose actions that bring happiness and success to others, the fruit of our karma is happiness and success.

Do you know,' he said again softly, addressing his hands, 'what it is to love someone, and never - never! - be able to give them peace, or joy, or happiness?' He looked up then, eyes filled with pain. 'To know that you cannot give them happiness, not through any fault of yours or theirs, but only because you were not born the right person for them?

Happiness had never been like this before. Now it came like sun showers, the sun and the rain together. Happiness was happier than it had been - sharp, piercing, and snatched, like a breath while swimming in surf.

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.

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.

Because gratitude is the key to happiness, anything that undermines gratitude must undermine happiness. And nothing undermines gratitude as much as expectations. There is an inverse relationship between expectations and gratitude: The more expectations you have, the less gratitude you will have.

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.

Bring happiness to your everyday experiences rather than try to extract happiness from them and however life looks, you'll be happy.

True happiness is not out there. True happiness lies within.

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.

My whole thing is to agree to disagree and to have respect because nothing can really be changed and you wouldn't want to ruin their happiness - even if that happiness is ignorance.

when happiness makes a guest appearance in one's life,it's important to make the most of it.It may not stay around for long and when it has gone wouldn't it be terrible to think that all the time one could have been happy was wasted worrying when the happiness would be taken away.

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.

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.

Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training, to be among the most god-like things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something god-like and blessed.

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.

Money doesn't buy happiness. It buys great hookers - but not happiness.

..that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself

The first person who ever told me that happiness was work was this manic-depressive artist I knew when I was in my 20s. I was like, 'What are you talking about? Happiness just happens. That's even the root of that word. How could it be work?

Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day.

How do you spell love?... when you reach the point where the happiness, security and development of another person is as much of a driving force to you as your own happiness, security, and development, then you have a mature love. True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person.

There's a happiness about me, a confidence and a happiness that I didn't have when I was younger. You feel good inside, you look good outside. I feel like I look like somebody who's having a good life, who's enjoying it a little better than I did before. You can be really good-looking in your twenties but feel miserable, and people just sort of walk away.

It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.

People are made for happiness. Rightly, then, you thirst for happiness. Christ has the answer to this desire of yours. But he asks you to trust him.

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

Do not look for happiness outside yourself. The awakened seek happiness inside.

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.