Quotes About Happiness

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

All around the country, individuals are choosing to redefine their lives and the pursuit of happiness in ways much closer to the original notion put forth by our Founding Fathers. Their notion of the "pursuit of happiness" wasn't just about acquiring money and power, but about doing your part to add to the civic happiness of the community.

I saw what a mess a lot of people could make of their lives when they're smitten. Some of them go temporarily insane. They find a person who they think holds the key to their happiness-the only key to their happiness... My work has always been my greatest happiness

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.

The most difficult thing for us seems to be to give of ourselves, to do away with selfishness. If we really love someone, nothing is too difficult for us to do for that individual. There is no real happiness in having or getting unless we are doing it for the purpose of giving it to others. Half the world seems to be following the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness-many think it consists of having and getting and being served, when really happiness is found in serving others.

At a time when you stay at the top, there is no explosion of happiness - happiness is experienced when everything remains in front of you, when you know that you have to a goal a few hundred, a few dozen meters when you are right in front. This is the time of happiness.

Happiness is a state of mind. With physical comforts if your mind is still in a state of confusion and agitation, it is not happiness. Happiness means calmness of mind.

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.

Many of us may have watched the waves at sea. They rise, then fall, then rise again, then fall again... and this cycle continues endlessly. It is the same with our experience of the world and its objects and relationships. We may find happiness, but this happiness will soon turn to sorrow. The sorrow that we feel will subsequently turn back to happiness but this oscillation continues endlessly. In order to maintain inner balance, we need to find peace within instead of depending on the external world.

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.

The happiness of those who want to be popular depends on others; the happiness of those who seek pleasure fluctuates with moods outside their control; but the happiness of the wise grows out of their own free acts.

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.

Happiness is not the shallow state of feeling pleased and chipper all the time. Happiness is the state of a human being that has achieved cross-level coherence within herself, and between herself and the people, challenges, and institutions around her. Happiness comes from between.

Don't be too much concerned about money, because that is the greatest distraction against happiness. And the irony of ironies is that people think they will be happy when they have money. Money has nothing to do with happiness. If you are happy and you have money, you can use it for happiness. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will use that money for more unhappiness. Because money is simply a neutral force.

God knows what is my greatest happiness, but I do not. There is no rule about what is happy and good; what suits one would not suit another. And the ways by which perfection is reached vary very much; the medicines necessary for our souls are very different from each other. Thus God leads us by strange ways; we know He wills our happiness, but we neither know what our happiness is, nor the way. We are blind; left to ourselves we should take the wrong way; we must leave it to Him.

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.

History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it.

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.

Don't evaluate your life in terms of achievements, trivial or monumental, along the way... Instead, wake up and appreciate everything you encounter along your path. Enjoy the flowers that are there for your pleasure. Tune in to the sunrise, the little children, the laughter, the rain, and the birds. Drink it all in... there is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.

And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness.

Happiness and joy comes to you when it moves through you. There is no other pathway--and that's the miracle. You will have a number of opportunities in the days just ahead to be a vehicle of happiness and joy for another. Step right into that. Be the source of that. As you bring others to a smile, so, too, will you bring yourself. The method is foolproof.

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

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

Life is not about warming yourself by the fire, life is about building the fire. And generosity is the match...If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap, but if you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.

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.

In the Light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.

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 is such a fleeting point of view - there's no such thing as continual happiness.

Why had we come to the moon? The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk an even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made to go about safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. ... against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and he must go.

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.

I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.

This will be triumph! This will be happiness! Yea, that very thing, happiness, which I have been pursuing all my life, and have never yet overtaken.

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

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.

Happiness lies not in happiness but only in the attempt to achieve it.

Our intentions - noticed or unnoticed, gross or subtle contribute either to our suffering or to our happiness. Intentions are sometimes called seeds. The garden you grow depends on the seeds you plant and water. Long after a deed is done, the trace or momentum of the intention behind it remains as a seed, conditioning our future happiness or unhappiness.

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.

The greatest gift that you could ever give to another is your own happiness, for when you are in a state of joy, happiness, or appreciation, you are fully connected to the stream of pure, positive Source Energy that is truly who you are. And when you are in that state of connection, anything or anyone that you are holding as your object of attention benefits from your attention.

Looking for happiness in the body, mind or world is like looking for the screen in a movie. The screen doesn't appear in the movie, and yet, at the same time, all that is seen in the movie is the screen. In the same way that the screen 'hides' in plain view, so happiness 'hides' in all experience.

Happiness is not a sign that we are right with God; happiness is a sign of satisfaction, that is all, and the majority of us can be satisfied on too low a level.

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.

You're not RESPONSIBLE for somebody else's happiness. You're responsible for your own HAPPINESS.

There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.

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.

Everybody in the world is seeking happiness - and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.

The purpose of God is the sovereign cause of all that good that is in man, and of all that external, internal and eternal good that comes to man. Not works past, for men are chosen from everlasting; not works present, for Jacob was loved and chosen before he was born; nor works foreseen, for men were all corrupt in Adam. All a believer's present happiness, and all his future happiness springs from the eternal purpose of God.