quotations about Happiness
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
ALBERT CAMUS
Caligula
A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
The Architecture of Happiness
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
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
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
To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
The happy man is he who turns his soul
Unto the light of joys that he can find;
And pays each day its just demand of toll,
But shuts the future troubles from his mind.
EDGAR GUEST
"The Present"
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
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
It may be obvious that this world has not been made merely for the ease and happiness of men, and obvious that we are not made to inhabit an earthly paradise, but the human heart can never cease to long for satisfaction of desire. This primal need has been the driving power to transform society and to improve the conditions of life. Even when men miss happiness as an experience, they feel they were made for it. The capacity for joy, which is their natural human instinct, demands fruition. To ask them to abandon the quest for happiness and to acknowledge it a phantom would be to make a mock of life.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Happiness hates the timid! So does science!
EUGENE O'NEILL
Strange Interlude
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.
ANDRE GIDE
The Immoralist
We know that happiness is short-lived, that we fail to cherish it when it is within our grasp and value it only when it has vanished forever.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
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
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
One secret to long-term happiness is surrounding yourself with others who are also happy.
DEEP PATEL
"20 Secrets to Living a Happier Life", Entrepreneur, July 2, 2018
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
Happiness is when you see your husband's old girlfriend and she's fatter than you.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
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