quotations about Happiness
Past happiness augments present wretchedness.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people.... Conflicts in relationships--having an annoying office mate or roommate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse--is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don't see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
Our happiness depends chiefly upon the estimate we form of life, and the efforts we make to bring ourselves into harmony with its laws.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
But for now, happiness throws stones.
It guards itself.
I wait.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
You've got to be responsible for your own happiness -- you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.
MAXIM GORKY
attributed, Know Your Limits
The most damaging erroneous belief about happiness is, of course, that happiness is somewhere else--that is, that it is not with you.
ROBERT HOLDEN
Happiness Now: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast
For no man lives, who always happy is.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Happiness is sitting down to watch some slides of your neighbor's vacation and finding out that he spent two weeks in a nudist colony.
JOHNNY CARSON
Happiness Is a Dry Martini
Call no man happy till he is dead.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to John Page, Jul. 15, 1763
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Heart of the Matter
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Notebooks, Aug. 16, 1916
Happiness, like air and water, the other two great requisites of life, is composite. One kind of it suits one man, another kind another. The elevated mind takes in and breathes out again that which would be uncongenial to the baser; and the baser draws life and enjoyment from that which would be putridity to the loftier.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. Acceptance is the key to everything.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Esquire, Dec. 2007
If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
We are all travelling to one destination--happiness; but none are going by the same road.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon