quotations about Happiness
In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say "I have learned" and "I have loved," you will also be able to say "I have been happy."
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Rama II
And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more -- to learning. Always.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
My friends' happiness forms part of my own.
PEDRO ALEXIS TABENSKY
Happiness: Personhood
Do you know what I think happiness is really? Lookin' forward.
JOHN HARTLEY MANNERS
Happiness and Other Plays
We take less pains to be happy, than to appear so.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Success is identical with happiness only on condition that we have aimed at and attained those things in life which are really worthwhile, and--if success is to be complete--the most worthwhile. Any success which does not result in happiness, in some one of its varied forms, for self or for others, is a sham.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
He that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
OSCAR LEVANT
attributed, TIME Magazine, August 28, 1972
Happy are those men who live without ambition, distrust, or disguise.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
To be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
One of the world's greatest mistakes is that of supposing that complete happiness can be found in the attainment of some one thing, whereas the helps to happiness are very numerous. Man is a compound being, possessing physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures, each of which have many wants which must be supplied if man is to be a happy being.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
The problem with the concept of happiness is trying to make it do enough without making it do too much. If we define it narrowly as a certain type of feeling or physiological state, then we can, in principle, measure it objectively, but it is too trivial a thing to be the foundation of all public life and private decisions. On the other hand, if we define it broadly as something like 'the elements of a good life', then it is so broad as to beg the question, and certainly too broad to be measured in national statistics. Yet we intuitively feel that there is something called happiness, something unitary but not trivial, concrete enough to strive for yet broad enough to be worth striving for.
DANIEL NETTLE
Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
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"
A somewhat depressing lesson that we learn from life is that there is no guaranteed sure-fire formula for happiness.
MICHAEL W. EYSENCK
Happiness: Facts and Myths
Happiness is a condition of mind not a result of circumstances.
JOHN LUBBOCK
attributed, Character and Conduct: A Book of Helpful Thoughts by Great Writers of Past and Present Ages
The duty of happiness becomes clearer when we see how it affects others. It is the merry heart that makes the cheerful countenance, and it is the cheerful countenance that spreads cheer to make other hearts merry. The sunny soul brings sunshine everywhere. A bright and happy temperament is a great social asset, adding to the happiness of the world.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
Like all happiness, it did not last long.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
He who strives for happiness is a fool.
The wise man makes happiness for another.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.
AMY LOWELL
"Happiness", Sword Blades and Poppy Seed