quotations about Happiness
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.
MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN
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preface, Authentic Happiness
I believe that happiness can be found. If I thought otherwise, I should be silent and not make unhappiness the more bitter by discussing it.
KARL HILTY
Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life
Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.
JONATHAN HAIDT
The Happiness Hypothesis
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle!
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Happiness is not the portion of man.
VOLTAIRE
Candide
Happy people die whole, they are all dissolved in a moment, they have had what they wanted.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"Post Mortem"
Give a man health and a course to steer; and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Captain Brassbound's Conversion
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
It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continu'st such, owe to thy self,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
False pleasures come from without and are imperfect: happiness is internal and our own.
JOHN LUBBOCK
Peace and Happiness
We live in a feel-good society, a culture thoroughly obsessed with finding happiness. And what does that society tell us to do? To eliminate "negative" feelings and accumulate "positive" ones in their place. It's a nice theory, and on the surface it seems to make sense. After all, who wants to have unpleasant feelings. But here's the catch: the things we generally value most in life bring with them a whole range of feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant. For example, in an intimate long-term relationship, although you will experience wonderful feelings such as love and joy, you will also inevitably experience disappointment and frustration.... It's pretty well impossible to create a better life if you're not prepared to have some uncomfortable feelings.
RUSS HARRIS
The Happiness Trap
Happiness does not depend upon surroundings, but upon disposition.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Happiness can not come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech at Groton, May 24, 1904
Who would dare speak the word "happiness" in these tortured times? Yet millions today continue to seek happiness. These years have been for them only a prolonged postponement, at the end of which they hope to find that the possibility for happiness has been renewed. Who could blame them? And who could say that they are wrong? What would justice be without the chance for happiness? What purpose would freedom serve, if we had to live in misery?
ALBERT CAMUS
Combat, Dec. 22, 1944
But for now, happiness throws stones.
It guards itself.
I wait.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
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
Past happiness augments present wretchedness.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
Gold, gold! It may not buy happiness, but it can buy you a better state of misery, that's for sure!
COUNT DUCKULA
"Ghostly Gold", Count Duckula
Happiness is less regulated by external circumstances than inward enjoyment. Whoever is happy in the satisfaction of himself feels imperturbable felicity; but he, who trusts entirely to the world for the disposition of his peace, must inevitably participate [in] many privations and disappointments.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections