HAPPINESS QUOTES III
quotations about Happiness
What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
American Note-Books, Aug. 22, 1837
But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
For many, not experiencing enough happiness is akin to not being physically fit. To be physically fit we need to work to enjoy the benefit. Being happy is similar. Like strengthening a muscle, to become happier we must practice activities that promote happiness.
BILL HOWATT
"A plan to make happiness happen", The Globe and Mail, June 6, 2018
Nothing, not even a Utopia, can necessarily make the pursuit of happiness a successful one that ends in capture. The best society can merely allow every individual to flourish in the pursuit.
DANIEL NETTLE
Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
Whatever the philosophers may say, it remains true that, from the first hour of man's waking consciousness until that consciousness ceases, his most ardent desire is to be happy, and that the moment of his most profound regret is when he becomes convinced that on this earth perfect happiness cannot be found. Here is the problem which gives to the various ages of human history their special characters. Blithe are those ages when young and progressive nations still hope for happiness, or when men believe that in some new formula of philosophy, or of religion, or perhaps in some new industrial programme, the secret of human happiness has at last been found. Gloomy are those ages in which, as in our time, great masses of people are burdened with the conviction that all these familiar formulas have been illusions, and when persons of the keenest insight say--as they are now saying--that the very word happiness has in it a note of melancholy. No sooner, we are told, does one speak of happiness than it flees from him. In its very nature it lies beyond the sphere of practical realization.
KARL HILTY
Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life
Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not, it were better that nothing should be. Without her, wisdom is but a shadow, and virtue a name; she is their sovereign mistress; for her alone they labour, and by her they will be paid; to enjoy her, and to communicate her, is the object of their efforts, and the consummation of their toil.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
Lives don't change. We simply become more comfortable with our core misery, which is a form of happiness.
DAVID WORTH
"The Case of the Missing Screenplay", Bored to Death
Make cheer from your own heart, for the sun rises and sets according to your perspective on the universe.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
The lovely thing about real happiness is that it is there all of a sudden, unexpected, weightless as a little summer cloud and just as radiant and intangible.
VICKI BAUM
I Know What I'm Worth
Men are nothing but speed bumps on the road to happiness.
MAXINE "MAX" FELICE SHAW
"Judging by the Cover", Living Single
If you're in a hurry to find happiness, slow down. Give it a chance to catch up with you.
ERNIE J. ZELINSKI
The Lazy Person's Guide to Happiness
Misfortune always comes to those who wait. The trick is to find happiness in the brief gaps between disasters.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
First Inaugural Address, Apr. 30, 1789
It is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.
JANE AUSTEN
Northanger Abbey
The farther from truth, the farther from happiness.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
We all know by theory that there is no permanent happiness in this life: But the weight of the precept is not felt in the same manner as when it is confirmed to us by a heavy calamity.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON, Pamela
When people say that they are happy with their lives, they do not usually mean that they are literally joyful, or experiencing pleasure, all the time. They mean that, upon reflection on the balance sheet of pleasures and pains, they feel the balance to be reasonably positive over the long term.
DANIEL NETTLE
Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
The fact is that happiness does not come from the big events of life, but is made up of innumerable little things. Ordinary everyday happiness is composed of shoes that fit, stomach that digests, purse that does not flatten, a little appreciation, and a bit of this, that, and the other, too trifling to mention.
FRANK CRANE
"Hidden Happiness", Four Minute Essays
But a dark cloud was at hand. If there be any truly painful fact about the world now tolerably well established by ample experience and ample records, it is that an intellectual and indolent happiness is wholly denied to the children of men.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies