quotations about Happiness
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
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
We all have direct experience with things that do or don't make us happy, we all have friends, therapists, cabdrivers, and talk-show hosts who tell us about things that will or won't make us happy, and yet, despite all this practice and all this coaching, our search for happiness often culminates in a stinky mess. We expect the next car, the next house, or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn't and even though others keep telling us that the next ones won't.
DANIEL GILBERT
Stumbling on Happiness
Worldly happiness is like a golden palace, but with no entrance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
At the heart of happiness lies peace. It is the last and the highest attainment of the soul.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Happiness is a hard master -- particularly other people's happiness.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
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
To be conscious of happiness is to hear Nemesis rapping at the portals.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
Isn't it clear that bliss and envy--they are the numerator and the denominator of the fraction known as happiness.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Why do we so often settle for what makes us devoutly unhappy! Why do we accept that happiness just isn't possible?
ANNE RICE
The Wolves of Midwinter
Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The best type of affection is reciprocally life-giving: each receives affection with joy and gives it without effort, and each finds the whole world more interesting in consequence of the existence of this reciprocal happiness. There is, however, another kind, by no means uncommon, in which one person sucks the vitality of the other, one receives what the other gives, but gives almost nothing in return. Some very vital people belong to this bloodsucking type. They extract the vitality from one victim after another, but while they prosper and grow interesting, those upon whom they live grow pale and dim and dull.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
Happiness hates the timid! So does science!
EUGENE O'NEILL
Strange Interlude
To be happy, even to conceive happiness, you must be reasonable or ... you must be tamed. You must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passions and learned your place in the world.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Egotism in German Philosophy
The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, January 2, 2015
We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment.
IMMANUEL KANT
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The paths by which people journey toward happiness lie in part through the world about them and in part through the experience of their souls. On the one hand, there is the happiness which comes from wealth, honor, the enjoyment of life, from health, culture, science, or art; and, on the other hand, there is the happiness which is to be found in a good conscience, in virtue, work, philanthropy, religion, devotion to great ideas and great deeds.
KARL HILTY
Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life