Quotes About Happiness

"Pursuit of happiness" implies that we're running after happiness and happiness is running away from us. It also implies that happiness is somewhere out there, in material goods, which we have to pursue, whereas I believe that it is an illusion happiness is not out there, it is within us.

When I look at what the world does and where people nowadays believe they can find happiness, I am not sure that that is true happiness. The happiness of these ordinary people seems to consist in slavishly imitating the majority, as if this were their only choice. And yet they all believe they are happy. I cannot decide whether that is happiness or not. Is there such a thing as happiness?

Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

Meditation simply means entering into states of mind which are happiness, profound happiness, simple happiness, beautiful happiness, complicated, uncomplicated - There are ten thousand states of mind.

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.

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.

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.

When you are happy you are ordinary, because to be happy is just to be natural. To be miserable is to become extraordinary. Nothing is special in being happy - trees are happy, birds are happy, animals are happy, children are happy. What is special in that? It is just the usual thing in existence. Existence is made of the stuff called happiness. Just look! - can't you see these trees?...so happy. Can't you see the birds singing?...so happily. Happiness has nothing special in it. Happiness is a very ordinary thing.

The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious and uptight about wanting things to go in the direction we think will bring happiness. We are always taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. The point is that the happiness we seek is already here and it will be found through relaxation and letting go rather than through struggle.

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

You know, as I get older, personal happiness is all about love. It's all about love. You know, how I'm loved and how I love my family and my husband. That to me is happiness, when I feel like I am loved and I have a place to love deeply. That to me is happiness.

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.

Happiness does not come from football awards. It's terrible to correlate happiness with football. Happiness comes from a good job, being able to feed your wife and kids. I don't dream football, I dream the American dream - two cars in a garage, be a happy father.

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.'

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

Desire is happiness: satisfaction as happiness is merely the ultimate moment of desire. To be wish and wish alone is happiness, and a new wish over and over again.

I had learnt to seek intensity rather than happiness, not joys and prosperity but more of life, a concentrated sense of life, a strengthened feeling of existence, fullness and concentration of pulse, energy, growth, flowering, beyond the image of happiness or unhappiness.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

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.

There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling - absolutely essential to mental health and happiness.

There are only two roads that lead to something like human happiness. They are marked by the words . . . love and achievement. . . . Inorder to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy. . . . The secret of human happiness is not inself-seeking but in self-forgetting.

Success does not necessarily create happiness. I could take you on a tour of West Lost Angeles. You would be surprised that happiness does not blossom in Beverly Hills any more than it does in most places.

Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative

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

Simply to have all the necessities of life and three meals a day will not bring happiness. Happiness is hidden in the unnecessary and in those impractical things that bring delight to the inner person. . . . When we lack proper time for the simple pleasures of life, for the enjoyment of eating, drinking, playing, creating, visiting friends, and watching children at play, then we have missed the purpose of life. Not on bread alone do we live but on all these human and heart-hungry luxuries.

Was there happiness at the end [of the movie], they wanted to know. If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab, and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say. Does anybody's? After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, undmindful of beginning, en, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.

Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.

The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.

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

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.

When I wake, I have a brief, delicious feeling of happiness that is somehow connected with Peeta. Happiness, of course, is a complete absurdity at this point, since at the rate things are going, I'll be dead in a day. And that's the best-case scenario, if I'm able to eliminate the rest of the field, including myself, and get Peeta crowned as the winner of the Quarter Quell. Still, the sensation's so unexpected and sweet I cling to it, if only for a few moments. Before the gritty sand, the hot sun, and my itching skin demand a return to reality.

Abiding happiness is not simply a possibility, but a duty; that all may live above the troubles of life; that worry is a poison and happiness a medicine.

The word 'happiness' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced and contrasted and compared to sadness. In comparing how an experience could have been worse we develop gratitude and happiness, while if we compare it how it could have been better we develop bitterness and sadness.

I fly in dreams, I know it is my privilege, I do not recall a single situation in dreams when I was unable to fly. To execute every sort of curve and angle with a light impulse, a flying mathematics - that is so distinct a happiness that it has permanently suffused my basic sense of happiness.

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.

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.

Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.

The reality is that fulfillment, success and all of these good things comes from trying to help those that we care about to achieve those things. How can I help somebody I care about find the job they love? How can I help somebody I care about find happiness in their work? And when we commit to service it actually biologically and anthropologically is more likely to lead to our own success and our own 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.

It may be that true happiness lies in the conviction that one has irremediably lost happiness. Then we can begin to move through life without hope or fear, capable of finally enjoying all the small pleasures, which are the most lasting.

Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.

The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one hand. Happiness comes from within, and rests most securely on simple goodness and clear conscience.

The goal of all goals is happiness, and our emotions are like road signs on that journey toward the goal of happiness.

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.

If America is the pursuit of happiness, the best way to pursue happiness is to help other people.

And when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.

In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure... Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all mens happiness.