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Happiness is security and payday loans are the happiness of two weeks.
-Anon.
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"Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times."
-Anon.
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What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
-Joseph Addison
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True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
-Joseph Addison
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"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy."
-Robert Anthony
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"...happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it..."
-Aristotle
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Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.
-Russell Baker
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It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.
-Lucille Ball
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Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.
-John Barrymore
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Because gratification of a desire leads to the temporary stilling of the mind and the experience of the peaceful, joyful Self, it's no wonder that we get hooked on thinking that happiness comes from the satisfaction of desires. This is the meaning of the old adage, "Joy is not in things, it is in us."
-Joan Borysenko
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"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost."
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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"To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance."
-Buddha
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Some people never find it, some only pretend, but I just want to live happily ever after every now and then.
-Jimmy Buffett
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"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
-Allan K. Chalmers
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“The danger of ancient liberty was that men, exclusively concerned with securing their share of social power, might attach too little value to individual rights and enjoyments. The danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence, and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we should surrender our right to share in political power too easily. The holders of authority are only too anxious to encourage us to do so. They are so ready to spare us all sort of troubles, except those of obeying and paying! They will say to us: what, in the end, is the aim of your efforts, the motive of your labours, the object of all your hopes? Is it not happiness? Well, leave this happiness to us and we shall give it to you. No, Sirs, we must not leave it to them. No matter how touching such a tender commitment may be, let us ask the authorities to keep within their limits. Let them confine themselves to being just. We shall assume the responsibility of being happy for ourselves.”
-Benjamin Constant
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We begin from the recognition that all beings cherish happiness and do not want suffering. It then becomes both morally wrong and pragmatically unwise to pursue only one's own happiness oblivious to the feelings and aspirations of all others who surround us as members of the same human family. The wiser course is to think of others when pursuing our own happiness.
-Dalai Lama
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"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action."
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Yet, as great joy, especially after a sudden change and revolution of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue...
http://www.literaturepage.com/read/tom-jones-914.html
-Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a foundling
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"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
-Benjamin Franklin
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"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home."
-Johann von Goethe
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"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
-Burton Hills
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Actual happiness looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.
-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
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"Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."
-Samuel Johnson
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"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
-Helen Keller
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"People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
-Abraham Lincoln
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If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
-Charles Montesquieu
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"Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy."
-Cynthia Nelms
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It is only when we are very happy, that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.
-Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
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The road to happiness lies in two simple principles; find what interests you and that you can do well, and put your whole soul into it - every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.
-John D. Rockefeller
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"Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable."
-Leo Rosten
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If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
-Bertrand Russell
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There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved...
-George Sand, Letter to Lina Calamatta, 1862
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"Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society."
-William Makepeace Thackeray
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"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."
-Mark Twain
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It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit.
-Denis Waitley
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I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.
-Martha Washington
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"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
-Oscar Wilde
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If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a part of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. 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. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bed room. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day. If you live only for yourself you are always an immediate danger of being bored to death with the repetition of your own views and interests. No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellowmen. If your ambition has the momentum of an express train at full speed, if you can no longer stop your mad rush for glory, power, or intellectual supremacy, try to divert your energies into socially useful channels before it is too late.
For those who seek the larger happiness and greater effectiveness open to human beings there can be but one philosophy of life, a philosophy of constructive altruism. The truly happy man is always a fighting optimist. Optimism includes not only altruism but also social responsibility, social courage and objectivity. The good life demands a working philosophy as an orientating map of conduct. This is the golden way of life. This is the satisfying life. This is the way to be happy though human.
-W. Beran Wolfe, 'How To Be Happy Though Human, 1932
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Books about Happiness
