quotes, quotations and passages about happiness

Happiness is not a possession
to be prized, it is a quality
of thought, a state of mind.

Daphne DuMaurier

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. Storm Jameson

Sometimes our thoughts turn back toward a corner in a forest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard powdered with flowers, seen but a single time on some happy day, yet remaining in our hearts and leaving in soul and body an unappeased desire which is not to be forgotten, a feeling that we have just rubbed elbows with happiness. Guy de Maupassant

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes a kindred heart, like the converged light upon a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared. Jane Porter To be able to find joy in another's joy: that is the secret of happiness. George Bernanos

Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning and you can't wait to finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't wait to get out--and you can't wait to come home, because the soup is hot. George Burns

Happiness not only needs no justification, but it is also the
only final test of whether what I am doing is right for me.
Only of course happiness is not the same as pleasure; it includes
the pain of losing as well as the pleasure of finding.

Joanna Field

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If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished;
but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult,
for we believe others to be happier than they are.

Montesquieu

I accept life unconditionally. Life holds so much--so much
to be happy about always. Most people ask for happiness
on condition. Happiness can be felt only
if you don't set conditions.

Artur Rubinstein

One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only
about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history
and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants
and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the
bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but
about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then,
if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom.

Gerald Brenan

We should tell ourselves once and for all that it is the
first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete,
independent, and great as lies in its power.
To this end we may sacrifice even the passion for
sacrifice, for sacrifice never should be the means of
ennoblement, but only the sign of being ennobled.

Maurice Maeterlinck

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions--the little
soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look,
a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals
of pleasurable and genial feeling.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Everybody really knows what to do to have his or her life filled with joy. What is it?
Quit hating people; start loving them. Quit being mad at people; start liking them.
Quit doing wrong; quit being filled with fear. Quit thinking about yourself
and go out and do something for other people. Everybody knows what
you have to do to be happy. But the wisdom of the test lies in the final words:
"If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."

Norman Vincent Peale

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 been opened for us.

Helen Keller

If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if
it were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among
human beings who are living richly and fully the good life.
If you observe really happy people you will find them
building a boat, writing a symphony, educating their children,
growing double dahlias in their gardens, or looking for
dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. They will not be searching
for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled
under the radiator. They will not be striving for it as a goal
in itself. They will have become aware that they are happy
in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day.
To find happiness we must seek for it in a focus outside ourselves.

W. Beran Wolfe

happiness 2 - happiness 3 - happiness 4

The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not
the superficial happiness that is dependent on circumstances.
It is the happiness and contentment that fills the soul even
in the midst of the most distressing circumstances and the
most bitter environment. It is the kind of happiness that grins
when things go wrong and smiles through the tears. The happiness
for which our souls ache is one undisturbed by success or failure,
one which will root deeply inside us and give inward relaxation,
peace, and contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be.
That kind of happiness stands in need of no outward stimulus.

Billy Graham

Happiness is that brief sigh of a moment that delivers a glow of peace
and serenity. Happiness is that tiny point of a feeling in our chest that
radiates itself a million times throughout our being. Happiness is that
"pause" that refreshes our spirit, allowing us to plunge back into the
rigors of our lives with renewed vigor. Happiness is that precise moment
that allows us to experience--even if briefly--that we are a part of a
vastness our minds will never comprehend. Don't knock
the brevity of happiness. Rejoice in its existence.

Anne Wilson Schaef
Meditations for Living in Balance

One is happy as a result of one's own efforts--once one knows
the necessary ingredients of happiness--simple tastes,
a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point,
love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience.

George Sand

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from
comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I
often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them
with other moments of the future.

Andre Gide

On our own, feeling alienated from the world we had been
created from, cut off from the full extent of its abundance,
people were no longer happy. We began to search for the
happiness we had lost. When we found something that
reminded us of it, we tried to possess it and accumulate
more--thereby introducing Stress into our lives. But searching
for lasting happiness and accumulating temporary
substitutes for it brought us no satisfaction.

Benjamin Hoff
The Te of Piglet

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear on cheerfully, do all bravely, awaiting occasions, worry never;
in a word to, like the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.

William Ellery Channing

Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition
of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve,
especially in these trying times. It takes reflection, and contemplation and self-discipline.

W.L. Shirer

Caring about others, running the risk of feeling,
and leaving an impact on people, brings happiness.

Harold Kushner

To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted
by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut,
a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel
that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

Nikos Kazantzakis
from Zorba the Greek

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond
your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Frost

Humanity has given rise to many talented artists, musicians, and
architects, but how many of us have mastered the art of creating
a happy moment—for ourselves and those around us?

Thich Nhat Hanh
The Art of Living

Articles and book excerpts on happiness:

Think of What You Have      Richard Carlson
Happiness      Bob Williams
Live on the Happy Side      Norman Vincent Peale
Make Room for Happiness      Kathy Gates
Making Change, One Layer at a Time      Rosemarie Rossetti
Self-Worth      Charles David Heineke
Cultivating Happiness     Rinatta Paries
Miss Dix's Dictates for a Happy Life     Dorothy Dix

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Many run about after happiness like an absent-minded man
hunting for his hat, while it is in his hand or on his head.

James Sharp

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of
consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.

Iris Murdoch

Even if you are born into the most affluent of circumstances or enjoy
a spectacular marriage that is the envy of others, there is no guarantee
that you will be happy. Happiness does not depend on wealth or
personal appearance, nor does it hinge on fame or recognition.
If your heart is empty, you cannot build genuine happiness.

Daisaku Ikeda
Buddhism Day by Day

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands,
like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own, it too could
wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records. . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands,
and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.

Naomi Shihab Nye
from "So Much Happiness"

One must never look for happiness: one meets it by the way. . .

Isabelle Eberhardt

If you want to be happy, be.

Henry David Thoreau

An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.

Lydia Maria Child

The secret to happiness is this: Let your interest be as wide as possible,
and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you
be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Bertrand Russell

We may think that happiness is a result of happy circumstances.
A more mature view of happiness is that it is a by-product of
sharing our good and serving others. It is a sense of doing a
job well, honest communication with another, visiting someone
who may be ill, or sharing a sense of humor. Happiness is a
spiritual principle that we can lay hold of and use, regardless
of outer conditions or circumstances.
It isn't necessary to wait for circumstances to bring happiness.
When we try to give it to others, it returns to us multiplied. We
can make our own joy, and let it act upon circumstances! One
of the great paradoxes of truth is that a happy heart draws to
itself what it needs for happiness.

John Marks Templeton
Worldwide Laws of Life

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery--air, mountains, trees,
people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”

Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar

happiness 2 - happiness 3 - happiness 4

As long as our self-identification centers around what we call the real
world, no profound happiness is possible. Happiness requires that we
give up a worldly orientation--not worldly things but a worldly
attachment to things. We have to surrender all outcomes. We have
to live here but appreciate the joke.
In order to become happy, we must become bigger than the worldly
self. . . . Just as children play games in which they pretend to be adults,
and thus pave the way for adulthood, so you and I must pretend to be
angelic, noble, enlightened spirits just visiting here,
in order to actually become them.

Marianne Williamson
Illuminata

One of Dr. Johnson’s ingredients of happiness was, “A little less time
than you want.” That means always to have so many things you want
to see, to have, and to do, that no day is quite long enough for all you
think you would like to get done before you go to bed.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Your highest pleasure is that which rebounds
from hearts that you have made glad.

Henry Ward Beecher

The art of being happy lies in the power of
extracting happiness from common things.

We each have to grab our own happiness, create our own
richness through experiences. We may share what we capture
with loved ones, but like us, they too must search their own
avenues for the satisfaction that lasts. We can neither give
happiness to another, like a gift, nor expect it in return.
The fullness of life we all long for is the natural byproduct
of living every moment as fully as possible. Our higher power
will never direct us into waters too deep. When we have
willingly turned our lives and our wills over, we'll find an
abundance of the rich, the full, the satisfying.

Karen Casey
Each Day a New Beginning

Your sense of what will bring happiness is so crude and blundering. Try
something else as a compass. Maybe the moralists are right and
happiness doesn't come from seeking pleasure and ease.

Joanna Field

Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony.

Mohandas Gandhi

At the end of the day, you are in control of your own happiness. Life
is going to happen whether you overthink it, overstress it or not. Just
experience life and be happy along the way. You can’t control
everything in your life, but you can control your happiness.

Holly Holm