quotations about Happiness
If thou would'st be happy, bring thy mind to thy condition, and have an indifference for more than what is sufficient.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
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
Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, Thoughts
Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.
ROBERT ANTHONY
attributed, The Graduate's Book of Practical Wisdom
Happiness is the soul in peace.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Nov. 13, 1712
That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Marble Faun
A man may be happy anywhere that knows how to be contented.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
THOMAS SZASZ
The Second Sin
There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. I think the whole premise is flawed. You're supposed to find true happiness outside of work. From friends, family, and YouTube videos of old people falling down.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Mar. 1, 2012
Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Self and Self-Management
Happiness has been so degraded by its identification with well-feeling that one can appear spiritually callous in rising to its defense. Some of the prophets who warned against the pursuit of psychological happiness have been made welcome, even if their warnings were not heeded for long. One has only to draw a line from Augustine through Luther and Pascal, to Kant and Kierkegaard, to Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth to be reminded of how much respect this dismissal has been afforded. They are heralded for their tough stance against worldliness and an unwillingness to conform to the spirit of the age. In short, they refused to be assimilated for the sake of temporal fulfillment.
DEAL WYATT HUDSON
Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction
The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
The Continuum Concept
We take less pains to be happy, than to appear so.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.
AESOP
Fables
The happiness of life, like the light of day, consists not in one brilliant flash, but in a series of mild, serene rays.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul.
VOLTAIRE
A Philosophical Dictionary
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Marble Faun
There are many teachers who assert positions, which logically lead to pessimism. Some declare that happiness is a will-o-the-wisp ever deluding the eager grasp, and it is better not to attempt the impossible. Others see life lived under a leaden sky and on a sodden earth. They agree that to some, and under some conditions, happiness of a kind would be possible, but it is so rare a chance that it is not worth counting on ourselves becoming the fortunate exceptions. There is not enough happiness to go round. Others assert that the sure way to lose happiness is to seek it. If you aim at it at all, it must be indirectly. You may have it at the back of your mind, but you must not have your eye on it. Still another objection to the pursuit of happiness is that it is selfish. Yet everybody would admit that a world of happy human beings is an ideal worth while. How is this even to begin to be possible, if nobody is ever to try to be happy himself?
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
It is good sometimes that the happy of this world should learn, were it only to humble their foolish pride for an instant, that there are higher, wider, and rarer joys than theirs.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Crowds"