Quotes About Happiness

The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest happiness using it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) – Wilhelm Meister

The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest happiness in using it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) – Wilhelm Meister

Happiness is a ball after which we run, wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) – Quoted in Perfect Jewels, a collection of the choicest things in the literature of Life, Love and Religion, Mills, Dodge & Pomeroy, 1886, p. 545.

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.
Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) – The Zykovs, in Gorky Plays 2, Translated by Cathy Porter, 2003,  Original  1914

Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.
Sir Wilfred Grenfell (1865-1940) Quoted in the Lutheran Quarterly Vol XLIV, 1914, p 514.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it; but likely enough it is gone the moment we say to ourselves, “Here it is!” like the chest of gold that treasure-seekers find.
Nathaniel Hawthorn (1804-1864 – The American Notebooks 1835 – 1853, 1851.

Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object.
Herman Hesse (1877-1962) – Quoted in: Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, 2006

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) – The Passionate State of Mind (1955)

To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) – The Passionate State of Mind (1955)

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that one is loved; loved for oneself, or better yet, loved despite oneself.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) – Les Miserables, 1862.

Happiness is a hard master particularly other people’s happiness.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) – Brave New World, ch. 16, (1932) Spoken by the character Mustapha Mond.

‘Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.’
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) – Brave New World, 1970

Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmit ting to others the rays of a supreme and ever shining benevolence.
Washington Irving (1783-1859) – The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, “Christmas,” Vol II, London, 1822, p. 13.

… happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) The Gods and Other Lectures, “The Gods,” C. P. Farrell,  1879,  p86

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
Henry James (1843-1916) – Roderick Hudson (1907), ch. I: Rowland, p7.

You have seen enough of the different conditions of life to know that it neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) – Letter to Mrs. Anna Jefferson Marks, Paris, July 12, 1788, in The Quotable Jefferson, Princeton University press, 2006, p235.

Your own happiness will be the greater as you perceive that you promote that of others.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) – Letter to Mrs. Anna Jefferson Marks, Paris, July 12, 1788, in The Quotable Jefferson, Princeton University press, 2006, p235.

Happiness . . . does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed them, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) – The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol III, 1781-1784, Putnam’s Sons, 1894, p.253

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers gardens.
Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857) – Specimens of Douglas Jerrold’s Wit, ed Blanchard Jerrold, 3rd ed, Ticknor and Fields, 1859, p. 168.

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth, and choice.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637) – Cynthia’s Revels, Act III Sc.2, Gutenberg.org. 

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics (1785), (GMS IV: 418)

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad,. Northern women development. [Nigeria]. p, 351.

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 (1880-1968), We Bereaved (1929)

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) – The Simplest Way to be Happy, Home magazine, Feb, 1933.

Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) – Optimism (1903)

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) – My Key of Life, Optimism , an Essay, London: Isbister &  Co. (1903), p1.

Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) Quoted in Reflections of Helen, Gary Haun, Author House, 2009.   p. 15.

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) -My Key of Life, Optimism , an Essay, London: Isbister &  Co. (1903)

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Soren Kierkegaard – Parables of Kierkegaaard  Ed. Thomas Owen, Princeton University Press, (1978), p27.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things and it is from having what we desire that we are happy – not from having what others think agreeable.
Duc De La Rochefoucaul – Maxims (1665)

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001) – Quoted in Worth Repeating: More than 5000 Classic and Contemporary Quotes, ed Bob Kelly, Kregel Publications, 2003, p. 193

If a man has not got the elements of happiness in himself, not all the beauty and variety, the pleasures and interests of the world can give it to him.
What we do see depends mainly on what we look for.
Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913) The Use of Life, Chapter XVIII, “On Peace and Happiness,” New York, MacMillan, 1923, p 270.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913) The Use of Life, Chapter XVIII, “On Peace and Happiness,” New York, MacMillan, 1923, p 271.

To do something however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being.
Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913) The Use of Life, Chapter XIII, “Industry,” New York, MacMillan, 1923, p 203.

Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living with what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Norman MacEwan (1881-1953) – Quoted in The Book of Positive Quotations, ed Leslie Ann Gibson, Steve Deger,  Globe Pedquot, 2024, p. 28.

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) – No Man is an Island, 1955.

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) – No Man Is An Island, 1955, 1983

I do not like the idea of happiness it is too momentary I would say that I was always busy and interested in something interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.
Georgia O’Keefe – The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer, edited by Clive Giboire (Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 1990), p. 324

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
James Oppenheim (1882-1932) – Also attributed to James Openheimer, one of the scientists who helped make the atomic bomb. The quote however, does not seem his style.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
George Orwell (1903-1950) – Critical Essays, 1945.

Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.
Gretta Brooker Palmer (1905-1953) – Quoted in Memorable Quotations: American Women Writers of the Past, ed. Dell, Writers Club Press, 2000, p. 217

Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844-1911) – Dr. Zay, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882

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 (1932-1963 ) – The Bell Jar, Ch. 8, 1963

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
Anna Quindlen (1952 – ) – A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Random House, 2001, p45.

The happiness of life consists, like the day, not in single flashes (of light), but in one continuous mild serenity. The most beautiful period of the heart s existence is in this calm equable light, even although it be only moonshine or twilight. Now the mind alone can obtain for us this heavenly cheerfulness and peace.
Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) – Quoted in Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, S. Austin Allibone, comp., 1880, p302.

Happiness lies more in imagination than in real possession. We are made happy by obtaining, not what others esteem desirable, but what we ourselves think so.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) – Maxims, and Moral Reflections. By the Duke de la Rochefoucault, Volume 8, Edinburgh, 1796, Maxim CLXXXVII, p.53.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Franklin D. Roosevelt  (1882-1945) – (First Inaugural Address Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Third American Revolution, Mario R. DiNunzio, ABC-CLIO, 2011, p113.

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.
Joseph Roux (1834-1905) – Meditations of a Parish Priest, Pens es, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1886, Part 9, LIV

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
Theodore Isaac Rubin (1923- ) – Quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, 2006

Indeed, man wished to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.
St. Augustine (Augustine of Hippo) – (354-430)   The City of God, 426, 

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
William Saroyan (1908-1981) – My Heart’s in the Highlands,  (1939)

Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure, are by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Quoted in How we choose to be Happy, Rick Foster, Greg Hicks, Penguin Publishing Group, 2004, p14, 

The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) –The Wisdom of Life and other  Essays, 1841, p4.

It is quite certain that what a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has…What a man has in himself is, then, the chief element in his happiness.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) – The Wisdom of Life, “Division of the Subject,” London, 1890

The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) – The Wisdom of Life, “Division of the Subject,” London, 1890

There is no happiness on earth like that which at the propitious moment a fine and fruitful mind finds in itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) – Essays, “Thinking for Oneself,” 1841

Money is human happiness in abstraction; so that a man who is no longer capable of enjoying it in concrete gives up his whole heart to it.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) – Essays, “Psychological Observations,” 1841

The state of human happiness, for the most part, is like certain groups of trees, which seen from a distance look wonderfully fine; but if we go up to them and among them, their beauty disappears; we do not know wherein it lay, for it is only trees that surround us. And so it happens that we often envy the position of others.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) – Essays, “Psychological Observations,” 1841

To live happily is the same thing as to live in accordance with nature’s laws.
Idem est ergo beate vivere et secundum naturam.
Seneca The Younger (4 BC – AD 65) – De Vita Beata, VIII. , 2.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without creating it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) – Candida, Act I (1898)

Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are.
John B. Sheerin (1907-1992) – Quoted in the Odessa American, Newspaper, September 4, 1956, p 5.

It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attributes are within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)- Pavel Rusanov in, Cancer Ward p266.

One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) – Shulubin, in Cancer Ward (1968) Pt. 2, Ch. 10

Pollo to phronein eudaimonias proton uparchei
Wisdom is the greatest part of happiness.
Sophocles (496 BC – 406BC) – Antigone, 1347-8

Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation of the word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694-1773) -letter, Dec. 26, 1749, Letters Written by the Late Right Honorable Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl, Earl of Chesterfield, to his Son, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl, Esq, 5th ed., vol. II, p. 307, London (1774).

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness.
Stendhal – Pen Name of French writer Marie-Henri Beyle (1783-1842) – Journal entry. 10 December 1801.

There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)  – An Apology for Idlers, and other essays,  Good Press, 2023.

One of the surest ways to find happiness for yourself is to devote your energies toward making someone else happy. Happiness is an elusive, transitory thing. And if you set out in search for it, you will find it evasive. But if you try and bring happiness to someone else, then it comes to you.
W. Clement Stone (1902-2002) – W. Clement Stone and Napoleon Hill, Success through a Positive Mental Attitude, 1960

 Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) – Walden, conclusion, paragraph 13.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) – War and Peace Book IV, ch. 1.

There is no such thing as finding true happiness by searching for it directly. It must come, if come at all, indirectly, or by the service, the love and the happiness we give to others.
Ralph Waldo Trine (1866-1958) – What all the World’s A-Seeking, 1896.

Happiness is a good that nature sells us.
Voltaire (1694-1778) – “Discourses on Man, Number 4,” in Life of Voltaire, Volume 2, James Parton, 1889, 332

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
Denis Waitley – 1933 -) – Quoted in Happiness: A Choice, Barbara A. McLeroy, Balboa Press, 1920.

Happiness is the manifest rule of life.
H.G.Wells (1866-1946) –Apropos of Dolores, Scribner’s Sons, 1938, p16.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards, they try to have more things or more money in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
Margaret Young (1891-1969) Quoted in Change Your Life, Alan Klein, Viva Editions, 2010