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Quotations about Happiness



Whenever you are sincerely pleased, you are nourished. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860


Happiness is the manifest rule of life. ~H. G. Wells, Apropos of Dolores, 1938


...the only possible good in the universe is happiness. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to try and make somebody else so. ~Robert G. Ingersoll, 1888


I've learned to be happy with what I have, and even if I lost it, I'd still be happy, because (see start of sentence.) ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com, 2019


The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. ~Mark Twain, 1896


There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time. ~Edith Wharton, "The Last Asset," in Scribner's Magazine, 1904  [Followed by, "That was Schopenhauer's idea, I believe." —tg]


What makes people who should be happy but are not madder than those who shouldn't be happy but are? ~Thomas Benjamin "Tom" Sims (1896–1972)


Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. ~E. L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, 1967


The key to happiness? Simple really. You don't let short-term concerns ruin your life, and you don't let long-term concerns ruin your day. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness is always a by-product. It never comes to those who concentrate on securing it... It always comes as a result of something else. The pursuit of noble things, the things essentially worth while... As a man goes on life's journey, with a brave heart, doing the best he can... he often hears the faint flutter of invisible wings, he feels a presence, a companion. It is Happiness. ~Chicago Herald, c.1917


Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. ~Robertson Davies (1913–1995)


All persons carry with them some means of happiness. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882


I don't think you can feel a sense of entitlement and still be happy. Happiness always comes from feeling that you've been blessed. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


It is pretty generally admitted that riches may be secured wrongfully, but happiness cannot. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor


Glory's not otherwhere but here:
Yonder stars may be more horrible than the worst of Earth.
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance:
The wise grows it under his feet.
~James Oppenheim, "The Wise," War and Laughter, 1916


After stumbling around looking for contentment for years I suddenly learned that you cannot find it by hunting furiously for it. Happiness sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. ~John Barrymore, as quoted by The Reader's Digest, 1934


"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best—," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. ~A. A. Milne


Must happiness always be a pursuit? Might it just be waking up each morning on the road you wish to travel and letting it take you wherever? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other. When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack. ~Hazelmarie "Mattie" Elliott


[H]appiness in its loftiest sense is a prayer... ~Mrs. J. Page Hopps, "Happiness as a Fine Art," 1904


I'm perfectly happy. — If only it were true. Not that I suppose anybody is ever perfectly happy, really. But just to be ordinarily contented, to be at peace. ~Noël Coward's Brief Encounter, 1945


Other people become less confusing once you realize that Happiness is not one-size-fits-all. ~Dr. SunWolf, professorsunwolf.com


Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one’s self, so as to have somewhat left to give, instead of being always prompt to grab? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage... ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "Afterthoughts," 1930


There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "Afterthoughts," 1930


...Thus pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find...
~William Wordsworth, "Stray Pleasures," 1806


But in giving happiness they give life, that is why happiness is worth having. When you play you are happy, while you are happy you are in eternity — for happiness annihilates time and space. ~Holbrook Jackson, "Peterpantheism," Romance and Reality: Essays and Studies, 1911


We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all. ~Jean de La Bruyère


Tranquil pleasures last the longest. We are not fitted to bear long the burden of great joys. ~Christian Nestell Bovee, "Pleasure," Intuitions, 1862


There are so many kinds of happiness, and each knows it in his own way and according to the size of the hole in the wall through which he views life. ~George A. Dorsey, Young Low, 1917


Don't dream of happiness; deserve it. ~Minna Thomas Antrim (1861–1950), Don'ts for Girls, 1902


Merriment comes in sparks, joy in flashes, and happiness in lightnings. ~Henry Stanley Haskins, "Happiness," Meditations in Wall Street, 1940


Every now and then,
when the world sits just right,
a gentle breath of heaven
fills my soul with delight...
~Hazelmarie "Mattie" Elliott, A Breath of Heaven


The secret to happiness is to put the burden of proof on unhappiness. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness is a well-balanced combination of love, labour, and luck. ~Mary Wilson Little, Reveries of a Paragrapher, 1897


There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. ~Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington


And she had lain awake through the silent midnight so alive with a tingling, electric joy that she could not sleep. ~Kate J. Neely, "Letty's Proposal," 1862


She wielded her desires like a magic pen and scrawled the great wonderword Happiness across her life in letters of flame and gold and diamonds and roses! ~Anita Vivanti Chartres (1866–1942), The Hunt for Happiness, 1896  [A little altered. Actually, the word was Fame but she later wanted to rewrite it as Happiness when she realized that Fame was disappointment, disillusion, and incompleteness. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


A happy thought is like a seed that sows positivity for all to reap. ~Miriam Muhammad, @flawlessmi, September 2009 winner of The Quote Garden create your own quote contest on Twitter, @quotegarden


Look about you with eyes keen for the silver lining in the blackest cloud. ~H. Addington Bruce, "Get the Joy Habit," Self-Development: A Handbook for the Ambitious, 1921


Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. ~Immanuel Kant


The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony. ~V. S. Pritchett


Be happy, and a reason will come along. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


There are only two ways to be happy — and if not happy why be at all. One is to have everything you want, and the other is to want nothing you can't have. ~William Ellis, 1899


The whole world is full of unworked joy-mines. Everywhere we go we find all sorts of happiness-producing material, if we only know how to extract it. ~Orison Swett Marden, The Joys of Living, 1913


Let us be thankful to people who bring us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust  [He continues: But let us be even more grateful to the cruel, unkind, and indifferent, who have devastated our hearts and enabled us to finally contemplate ourselves. —tg]


And the joy of the world in my spirit is springing! ~Edwin Markham, "Wind on the Rye," The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems, 1913


With some whose nerves have a deep covering of fat, happiness is less of a problem than it is an accident of anatomy. ~Henry Stanley Haskins, "Happiness," Meditations in Wall Street, 1940


In sunshine or in shade
The gossamer wings of joy
Are always to be seen.
~Julia Cooley Altrocchi (1893–1972), "Sentences That I Make Up," The Poems of a Child, Being Poems Written Between the Ages of Six and Ten, 1904


Don't be afraid to be glad. As the mists and cobwebs fade before the sunbeams of morning, so sadness flies. ~Ouina (Cora L. V. Scott Richmond), given through her Medium "Water Lily," Ouina's Canoe, 1882


She knew that something wonderful and beautiful was going to happen. It had happened; it was happening now... If nothing changed, if this minute that she was living now prolonged itself, if it went on for ever and ever, that would be happiness enough. ~May Sinclair, The Romantic, 1920


Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness is breathlessly chasing you. ~Terri Guillemets


The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. ~Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954


The search for happiness is unlike any other search, for we search last in the likeliest places. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness is always the serendipitous result of looking for something else. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer, lumpenbangenpiano.com


Nearly every human being is looking for happiness, but very few know what happiness is. Nevertheless if you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness, as if it were a collar stud that has rolled under the dressing-table. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself, nor will he be seeking it among the nebulous wastes of metaphysics. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. ~W. Béran Wolfe, M.D. (1900–1935), How to Be Happy Though Human, 1931


If you search the world for happiness, you may find it in the end, for the world is round and will lead you back to your door. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


How little we know
As we follow its track
How much of the search
Will be circling back.
~Robert Brault, "On Searching For Happiness," rbrault.blogspot.com, 2018


Happiness is no apple that you can peel and eat. ~W. Béran Wolfe, M.D. (1900–1935), How to Be Happy Though Human, 1931


Happiness is a quality and an attribute of the good life. The more you try to define it the less you know about it. It is as ineluctable as electricity, as evanescent as melody, as indefinable as health, as variable as speed, time, matter, and the other fictions on which life itself is built. Happiness knows no standards and no limits. ~W. Béran Wolfe, M.D. (1900–1935), How to Be Happy Though Human, 1931


For it is our thesis that living happily is a fine art that nearly everyone who possesses an iota of intelligence, courage, and a sense of humor can learn. ~W. Béran Wolfe, M.D. (1900–1935), How to Be Happy Though Human, 1931


...laughing themselves silly with joy... ~Frances Frost, Little Fox, 1952


The art of being a complete, and happy, human being may be likened to a process of creative self-sculpture. This term best describes the art of attaining poise and satisfaction, of gaining the courageous hopefulness and sense of freedom, the objective self-esteem that are the essential premises of happiness. Our heritage as human beings is the raw material of the fine art of being human. Every man must take this rock and hew out a design for himself. If he succeeds in this task within the time limit set by nature, he may well consider himself a happy human being. ~W. Béran Wolfe, M.D. (1900–1935), How to Be Happy Though Human, 1931


A god can hardly disturb a man truly happy. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856


The next morning Brush woke up and lay for a long time staring at the ceiling. He felt wonderfully well. ~Thornton Wilder, Heaven's My Destination, 1935


The best climate is found in the state of Contentment. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882


Often one's greatest happiness needs less to be pursued than welcomed. ~Robert Brault, 2017, rbrault.blogspot.com


Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world; some people go through life creaking. ~Friendly Calendar, 1911


My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:
A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.
~William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III, c.1590  [III, 1, Henry VI]


      So take joy home,
And make a place in thy great heart for her,
And give her time to grow, and cherish her;
Then will she come, and oft will sing to thee,
When thou art working in the furrows; ay,
Or weeding in the sacred hour of dawn.
It is a comely fashion to be glad—
Joy is the grace we say to God...
~Jean Ingelow, "Dominion," A Story of Doom and Other Poems, 1867


Joy is such stuff as the hinges of Heaven's doors are made of. ~Robert Haven Schauffler, "A Defense of Joy," The Joyful Heart, 1914


The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. ~J. D. Salinger, 1952


Joy is not in things, it is in us. ~Charles Wagner


Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. ~John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, 1873


The surest way to find a paradise on earth, the old gardener told us, is to plant your own. ~Dr. SunWolf, professorsunwolf.com


You can't postpone sorrow, so why would you postpone happiness? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


There is no way to peace; peace is the way. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way. If you are determined, you can do it with your breathing. ~Thich Nhat Hanh


I dunno, you get to a point in life where you'd settle for life, liberty and the pursuit of can't complain. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


There is a question I sometimes put to myself, and I suppose everyone does in his secret moments. When, if ever, am I actually happy? There are two situations in which I have unexpectedly found myself thinking, "Observe, I am perfectly happy." One of them is when I am reading a good detective story and feel I am about to go to sleep. The other happiness is sitting on a gravel path and pulling up weeds. ~Christopher Morley (1890–1957)


Happiness is the sunshine of life... ~The Encyclopædia Britannica, 1841


Happiness is the sunshine of the soul. ~Proverb


Happiness is sunshine of the heart;
It is the soul's illumination, a light...
~James Henry Potts, "Happiness," Every Life a Delight, 1914


Happiness is like sunshine. It may carry in the seed of disaster when it is too intense. ~George A. Dorsey, Young Low, 1917


My heart grows light so fast that I could mount a grasshopper and gallop around the world, and not fatigue him any! ~Emily Dickinson, 1852


Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and "Forward!" is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building: it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life, thinking of what might have been, and forgetting the may-be that lies before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not because of the happiness that is gone. ~Jerome K. Jerome, "On Memory," The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow: A Book for an Idle Holiday, 1890


Real happiness is not of temporary enjoyment, but is so interwoven with the future that it blesses for ever. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882


We can't control the world. We can only (barely) control our own reactions to it. Happiness is largely a choice, not a right or entitlement. ~David C. Hill, hill-kleerup.org/blog


The measure of our happiness is the measure of our love. ~Thomas Rohan, Old Beautiful, 1926


I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy? ~Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905


One tear of joy outweighs a thousand tears of grief. ~James Henry Potts, "Laugh and Live Long," Every Life a Delight, 1914


We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963


New heart makes new health, dear. Happiness is haleness. ~Emily Dickinson, 1865


...the question isn't whether you're happy or unhappy but alive or dead. ~James Baldwin


Happiness is an elusive target — it can be hit only unexpectedly — with arrows aimed elsewhere. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer, lumpenbangenpiano.com


The key to happiness is pretty much the same as the key to worry and anxiety — you must learn to make a big deal out of nothing. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable. ~Joseph Roux, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood


Happiness is but a bubble,
Love a blind and fickle thing,
If we do not take the trouble
To know better, and thus sing—
      Happiness is dew of roses
      Sprinkled lightly on the heart,
      Love their fragrance—both are posies
      Written on Life's mystic chart.
~James Mackintosh, "Fill a Bumper," Antonio, & Other Poems, 1876


If you feel happy to the point of saying so, listen! unhappiness is at your door. ~Joseph Roux, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood


So long as we can lose any happiness we possess some; and it is the truth that most people possess more than they realize, for we know how pathetically often loss reveals what a great quantity has been possessed but not realized. ~Booth Tarkington, c.1926


One thing you notice about the happiest people is that they always seem to have the littlest reason. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Joy never feasts so high,
As when the first course is of misery.
~John Suckling, Aglaura, 1638  [Ziriff —tg]


...one happy emotion of the heart lightens up Fancy's scenery like a sunbeam. ~Thomas Clark Henley, A Handful of Paper Shavings, 1861


Happiness is distraction from the human tragedy. ~J. M. Reinoso


Oh, master of the art of happiness!
Wise keeper of the secret things which bless
With peace and quietude, the soul distraught!
~John Erb (Ellsworth R. Bathrick, 1863–1917), Beauty on Ice: A Thrilling Tale of a Ruined Realm, 1899


We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. ~Thomas Merton, 1955


Seeking happiness, I passed many travelers headed in the opposite direction, seeking happiness. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


You remember the old nursery song, Phil: "If you want to be happy, be good, — be good." ~Julia A. Willis, What A Boy!, 1875


If you want to be happy — be busy. ~Charles Edwards, "Bird Lessons for the Bairns," 1897


If you want to be happy, be grateful. ~Donald Brophy


If you want to be happy, be kind to others. ~John Hospers


If you want to be happy, be happy. ~South African proverb


The happy man is not he who seems thus to others, but who seems thus to himself. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856


...you have by some little word caused my heart to throb with happiness. ~Anonymous, Dacia Singleton, 1867


Never take offense when none is intended. Act as though you were born to be happy and will not allow any one to make you unhappy. ~James Henry Potts, "Secrets of Success," Every Life a Delight, 1914


The greatest gift we give to someone who loves us is simply to be happy. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Why, all the happiness the world inherits is for you, but you have shut yourself from it. ~Alwyn M. Thurber, Quaint Crippen, 1896


The happy have whole days, and those they choose,
The unhappy have but hours, and those they lose.
~Colley Cibber, The Double Gallant: or, The Sick Lady's Cure, 1707


You actually would have thought Joe was purring, he was so happy... ~Peppermint Perkins (Joe Perkins), 1885


Happiness... is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. ~Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good, 1968


With a wild, overwhelming joy... ~Charles Gibbon, The Flower of the Forest, 1882


Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. ~Thomas Szasz, as quoted in Abe Arkoff, Psychology and Personal Growth, 1980


One joy scatters a hundred griefs. ~Chinese proverb


We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. ~Bernard Shaw, Candida, 1898


A man's as miserable as he thinks he is. ~Seneca


Misery is almost always the result of thinking. ~Joseph Joubert


Whatever you set aside to seek happiness, remember where you put it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


HAPPINESS.—A butterfly, which when pursued, seems always just beyond your grasp; but if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~"A Chapter of Definitions," Daily Crescent, 1848 June 23rd


People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy. ~Anton Chekhov, 1898


The trick is to live your happiness, with a joyful daily awareness, not just recognize it years later, as a wistful memory. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness, without dreaming of it; but likely enough it is gone the moment we say to ourselves, "Here it is!" like the chest of gold that treasure-seekers find. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851


Real happiness is more of a habit than a goal, more of an attitude than an attainment. It is the companion of cheerfulness, not the creature of circumstance. Happiness is what overtakes us when we forget ourselves, when we learn to open our eyes in optimism and close the door in the face of defeat. ~William Arthur Ward


Every day spent happily striving toward some unreachable goal is to achieve the real goal, which is to spend your days happily. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. ~Douglas Jerrold


What is earthly happiness?... Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession... Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route... She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and contiguity destroys. Yet, when unsought she is often found, and when unexpected often obtained; while those who seek for her the most diligently fail the most, because they seek her where she is not. ~C. C. Colton


When it comes to happiness, I think a lot of effort is spent to have tomorrow what just slowing down a little would get you today. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely. ~Georges Duhamel, The Heart's Domain (La Possession du monde), translated by Eleanor Stimson Brooks, 1919


If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Higher Laws," Walden, or Life in the Woods, 1854


The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Higher Laws," Walden, or Life in the Woods, 1854


There is no expert on what happiness is but many on what it might have been. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


No man is happy who does not think himself so. ~Publilius Syrus, 1st century BCE, from the Latin by D. Lyman, 1856


Grief counts the seconds: happiness forgets the hours. ~J. De Finod


Eden is that old fashioned House
We dwell in every day,
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away...
~Emily Dickinson


If you flatter yourself properly you will be better able to enjoy yourself. Stretch your joy so that others enjoy you too. ~Willis Goth Regier, In Praise of Flattery, 2007


      Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by...
Joy always,
Joy everywhere—
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.
~Carl Sandburg, "Joy," Chicago Poems, 1916


Some of the nicest people I know would rather lie on the grass and watch fat, white clouds languidly play tag with each other in a deep-blue sky than dig an asparagus trench. Maybe they are just plain lazy or maybe they are poets, by temperament if not by performance. In either case, why disturb them? It seems to me that our first obligation to ourselves, our family and friends, and to society, is to be happy. If they are happy lying on the grass they are only doing their duty. ~Ruth Stout, "The Second Season," How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, 1955


We never give up wanting things for ourselves, but there comes a day when what we want for ourselves is someone else's happiness. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Unquestionably it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen twentieths of mankind, even in those parts of our present world which are least deep in barbarism... ~John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1863


The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. ~George W. Burnap, Lectures on the Sphere and Duties of Woman, 1841


Content can soothe, where e'er by fortune placed,
Can rear a garden in a desert waste.
~Henry Kirke White (1785–1806), "Clifton Grove"


Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the Future; Age knows her as the Dream. ~Ambrose Bierce


Even happiness worries sometimes. ~Terri Guillemets


Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~Samuel Johnson, 1759


You say the world is sad, that all must die.
      Yet I would live! With humming-birds I sip
      The honey from the flower's painted lip.
I hear the silver temple bell, and lie
In poppy fields. And, though I know not why,
      A breeze has blown across my face the tip
      Of fairy's wing. Into the dawn I dip.
Unto the night I lift my arms, and sigh,
And wonder. With the firefly's wings I toy,
      And fear them not, for if they burn, the mad
            Imagined pleasure is the more complete.
      You say that life is sad,— then I am sad,
            And weep, and even tears are bitter-sweet.
For they are shadows of the tears of joy!
~Dorothe Bendon, "Love of Life," 1926


On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except the fact that they are so... ~William R. Inge


But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956, translated by Justin O'Brien


Sometimes we don't find the thing that will make us happy because we can't give up the thing that was supposed to. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963


Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness. ~Don Marquis


I don't want anything from the past. I no longer count on the future. The present is enough for me. I am a happy man, because I have renounced happiness. ~Jules Renard, translated from the French


We cannot afford to be anchorites. There is no such thing as being happy ourselves unless we make others happy. ~T. De Witt Talmage, 1884


Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine. ~Henry Ward Beecher


No matter how carefully you plan your life, in the end your happiness comes down to someone who one day just walked into it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


[T]he beautiful world of blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her heart... life still called to her with many insistent voices. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables  [the comfort of knowing the world goes on after grief, and that we can too —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


When a man has lost all happiness, he’s not alive. Call him a breathing corpse. ~Sophocles


One day you just say "To heck with it," and you go looking for trouble, and you find happiness. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


May I have, through life, a perfect digestion
And, also, the full price of a meal!
And may I, I pray, have a comfortable bed,
Which is asking, I know, a great deal!
~Gertrude T. Buckingham, "My Prayer," 1940s


The test of all happiness is gratitude... ~Gilbert K. Chesterton, "The Ethics of Elfland," Orthodoxy, 1908


Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1963


I don't think most people want to be unhappy. It's just something they've gotten good at. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


...and to be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others, bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. ~C. C. Colton


      His mother shrugged his troubles from her shoulders and left him to ferment in his own vinegar. But Willie was not happy. He was getting what he asked for, and it was not what he wanted. Perhaps he had never been truly happy in his whole existence. He had been amused at times, but usually then with a cynical delight in somebody's misfortunes or mistakes.
      How could he have been thoroughly happy when he had never been truly well? What health he had was a negation, a convalescence; it was at best a not being sick. He was of a fabric that broke down and wore through constantly. He could understand the definition of happiness as "having a splinter in your finger and getting it out."
      But the joy that comes from bounding arteries, glowing skin, a galloping heart, a volcanic desire to laugh because the soul is bursting with laughter, or to sing for mere song's sake, or to be an instrument in the symphonic universe when it is playing one of its mighty ensembles — that cosmic happiness was unknown to Willie Enslee.
      When he found a rapture he always found something the matter with it; there was a worm in the apple, a slug in the salad, a fly in the ointment, a flaw in the diamond. ~Rupert Hughes, What Will People Say?, 1914


And contentment is wholly an intellectual process. It is not to be attained by any material achievement. ~William Ellis, 1899


Man should have an intuition of this far-reaching cosmic purpose and then, if he takes care to see that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things, the difficulties of earthly existence will not destroy his peace of mind. ~Epictetus


BRASSBOUND.  I don't say I was happy in it; but I wasn't unhappy, because I wasn't drifting. I was steering a course and had work in hand. Give a man health and a course to steer; and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.
LADY CICELY.  Sometimes he won't even stop to trouble about whether other people are happy or not.
~Bernard Shaw, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 1899


Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness that is not your own. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1915


Happiness is the natural flower of duty. ~Phillips Brooks


But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~Albert Camus


Happiness is an occasional brief glance into how simple it all can be. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. ~The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness, 1914


Looking back on a happy life, one realizes that one was not happy all the time. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


She is leading what she calls "an ideal life," — painting, music, love, and the world shut out. ~Louisa May Alcott, journal, February 1879, of May Alcott Nieriker


Cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in strong health as colour is to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labour, or erring habits of life. ~John Ruskin, "Of Mountain Beauty: The Mountain Gloom," Modern Painters, 1856


Happify. — To please. ~Slang and its Analogues: A Dictionary of Heterodox Speech, John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, 1890s


Consequently, we should try as much as possible to maintain a high degree of health; for cheerfulness is the very flower of it. ~Arthur Schopenhauer


With penetrating insight, the mystics will tell us that when we have a desire for a certain thing, a certain experience, and we fulfill that desire, the happiness we feel is not something given by that thing or experience; it is due to having no craving for a little while. ~Eknath Easwaran, The Mantram Handbook


[T]he true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life... ~William Morris, "The Aims of Art," 1887


If yu ever find happiness bi hunting for it, yu will find it, az the old woman did the spektakles she had lost, safe on her own noze all the time. ~Josh Billings


It is not happiness until you capture it and store it out of the reach of time. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Cultivate the art of jollying yourself! ~Elizabeth Jones Towne, Practical Methods for Self Development, 1904


...happiness is a purple eye-band. ~Benjamin De Casseres, "In Every Key," Puck, 1917


Before we set our Hearts too much upon any Thing, let us examine how happy those are, who already possess it. ~François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)


He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1958


[U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental. ~Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, 1829


Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length  ~Robert Frost


Contentment is the more serene brother of Happiness. ~Terri Guillemets


To be happy, you must fancy that everything you have is a gift, and you the chosen, though you worked your tail off for every bit of it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming — a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière


Americans pursue happiness as they would a firefly, and when caught trap it in a jar until it suffocates from lack of freedom. ~Terri Guillemets, "Glow of happiness," 2004


So often the shortest distance to happiness is the length of an about-face. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Yet the name of Abdalrahman may be added to the list of those who from the time of Solomon to the present age, have complained that the possession of a throne could never afford any lasting satisfaction. An authentic memorial, which ought to temper the ardour of ambition, was found in the closet of the Caliph after his decease; was transcribed, and carefully preserved, as an instructive lesson to posterity. "I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity; in this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen: O man! place not thy confidence in this present world." The admonition was probably read, admired, and neglected... ~Alexander Beaumont, History of Spain, 1793  [Abd al-Rahman —tg]


HAPPINESS, n.  An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Word Book, 1906





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published 1998 Mar 18
revised 2020 Dec 31
last saved 2025 Jan 28
www.quotegarden.com/happiness.html