quotations about Happiness
Maybe you have to wait for happiness. Maybe the rest is only words.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
The Writing Life
States of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intense enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
RENé DESCARTES
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
You have to fight to carve little pieces of happiness out of your life, or the everyday emergencies will eat up everything.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Cerulean Sins
Happiness is a road-side flower, growing on the highways of Usefulness,
Plucked, it shall wither in thy hand; passed by, it is fragrance to thy spirit.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call "happiness", if we be but able to entertain them.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Kleiner, October 1916
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have the time. But the present time has one advantage over every other--it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future are not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Most folks are just about as happy as they've made up their minds to be.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
My capacity for happiness ... you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
As the sea is beautiful not only in calm but also in storm, so is happiness found not only in peace but also in strife.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
If I think that happiness is possible, I know all too well its hidden nature--and by what wretched paradox, instead of being an excess that would elevate us in dignity, it is a numbness we are only aware of afterward.
ALBERT CAMUS
letter, Jun. 18, 1938
To be conscious of happiness is to hear Nemesis rapping at the portals.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.
THICH NHAT HANH
Peace is Every Step
Worldly happiness is like a golden palace, but with no entrance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Dream Play
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Huxley and God: Essays
The happy should not insist too much upon their happiness in the presence of the unhappy.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk