happiness Quotes

“But you know, happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake! Listen to me, all of you! You’ve got just as much right as wizards to be unhappy! You’ve got the right to wages and holidays and proper clothes, you don’t have to do everything you’re told — look at Dobby!”

“Chin up, chin up. Everybody loves a happy face.”

“What matters most are the simple pleasures so abundant that we can all enjoy them...Happiness doesn’t lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes.”

Mr. Wonka: “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted.” Charlie Bucket: “What happened?” Mr. Wonka: “He lived happily ever after.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

“Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.”

“I sometimes wonder if all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”

“Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m as happy as a cricket here.”

“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”

“Money is a needful and precious thing,—and, when well used, a noble thing,—but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self- respect and peace.”

“Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this!”

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

“I’m not ambitious for a splendid fortune, but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bead is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures. I am content to see Meg begin humbly, for if I am not mistaken, she will be rich in the possession of a good man’s heart, and that is better than a fortune.”

“One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.”

“So she enjoyed herself heartily, and found, what isn’t always the case, that her granted wish was all she had hoped.”

“Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort it is.”

“The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship”

“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”

“It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness.”

“It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?”

“The foundation of courage is vulnerability--the ability to navigate uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. It takes courage to open ourselves up to joy...joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion we experience. We’re afraid that if we allow ourselves to feel lit, we’ll get blindsided by disaster or disappointment. That’s why in moments of real joy, many of us dress-rehearse tragedy...I call it foreboding joy. The only way to combat foreboding joy is gratitude.”

“Most of us are showing up to ensure that people’s basic needs are met and their civil rights are upheld. But we’re also working to make sure that everyone gets to experience what brings meaning to life: love, belonging, and joy. These are essential, irreducible needs for all of us. And we can’t give people what we don’t have. We can’t fight for what’s not in our hearts.”

“Stay in your own lane. Comparison kills creativity and joy.”

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”

“Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”

“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”

“Why joys so scantily disburse, Why Paradise defer, Why floods are served to us in bowls,— I speculate no more.”

“She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.”

“You must be the best judge of your own happiness.”

“Pan, who and what art thou?” he cried huskily. “I’m youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture, “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”

“For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy.”

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

“‘Dear old world’, she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.‘”

“I don’t care about truth. I want some happiness.”

“You seem so sad, Eeyore.” “Sad? Why should I be sad? It’s my birthday. The happiest day of the year.”

“Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

“Riches, prestige, everything can be lost. But the happiness in your own heart can only be dimmed; it will always be there, as long as you live, to make you happy again.”

“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”

“We have many reasons to hope for great happiness, but...we have to earn it. And that’s something you can’t achieve by taking the easy way out. Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.”

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.”

“Justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; and I recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humour, one glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica--she looked so frank-hearted and happy.”

“And many happy returns to you, Pooh Bear.”

“Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”

“I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing.”

“She thought, I’ve learned to bear anything except happiness. I must learn how to carry it.”

“Every form of happiness is private.”

The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself.

“Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish,” said Emmanuel, “know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.”

“Without pain, how could we know joy?′ This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.”

“We are all a great deal luckier than we realize, we usually get what we want - or near enough.”

We are always in a hurry to be happy,... for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.

It is a charming quality of the happiness we inspire in others that, far from being diminished like a reflection, it comes back to us enhanced.

“No one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.”

“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”

[W]e frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognizing it.

“They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.”

Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain it.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

“I hustled for joy.”

I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.

“When I went into their family, it was the abode of happiness and contentment. The mistress of the house was a model of affection and tenderness. Her fervent piety and watchful uprightness made it impossible to see her without thinking and feeling—“that woman is a Christian.”

“Work just as hard for fun moments, vacation moments, and pee-your-pants laughing moments as you do for all the other things.”

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”

“If you aren’t unhappy sometimes you don’t know how to be happy.”

“I grasped two things: I wasn’t as happy as I could be, and my life wasnt going to change unless I made it change.”

“Some stories don’t have happy endings. Even love stories. Maybe especially love stories.”

“Look for happiness under your own roof.”

“Turned on its side, the brick announced a happy bee family, no Ozzie, just Harriet and her ten thousand daughters.”

“It’s about living in the moment and appreciating the smallest things. Surrounding yourself with the things that inspire you and letting go of the obsessions that want to take over your mind. It is a daily struggle sometimes and hard work but happiness begins with your own attitude and how you look at the world.”

“Look for happiness under your own roof.”

“When I find myself focusing overmuch on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal, I remind myself to ‘Enjoy now’. If I can enjoy the present, I don’t need to count on the happiness that is (or isn’t) waiting for me in the future”.”

“We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

“The First Splendid Truth: To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.”

“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”

“One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.”

“Look for happiness under your own roof.”

“All I can say is that you make me... you make me into someone I couldn’t even imagine. You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you - even the you that you seem to think is diminished - than with anyone else in the world.”

“It has been,” I told him, “the best six months of my entire life.” There was a long silence. “Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.” And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it.

“To while away the day contemplating evils that might have been is to poison the happiness we already have.”

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared.”

“I don’t want to know what time it is. I don’t want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.”

“That was her mistake. She’d pinned her happiness to a teenage girl’s chest. Idiot. The realization made her almost smile. She certainly knew better than that.”

“The trick is to find happiness in the brief gaps between disasters.”

“Is she happy? For portions of every day, she is happy.”

“Happiness is not a concept I tend to dwell on. Chinese parenting does not address happiness.”

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”

“He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

Miss Bates had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavor to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good will.

“You are loved. Massively. Ferociously. Unconditionally. The Universe is totally freaking out about how awesome you are. It’s got you wrapped in a warm gorilla hug of adoration. It wants to give you everything you desire. It wants you to be happy. It wants you to see what it sees in you.”

“Never has it felt more important for me to tell stories of joy and abandon, passion and recklessness. Life is short and difficult, people. We must take our pleasures where we can find them. Let us not become so cautious that we forget to live.”

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“I worked out what would make me happy, and I worked out what I wanted to do, and I trained myself to do the job that would make those two things happen.”

“Western children are definitely no happier than Chinese ones.”

How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”

″‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!‘”

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

“Then you can sail away . . . and be happy.”

“We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure–your perfection–is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”

“He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness.”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.”

She hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

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

“We’re not meant for happiness, you and I.”

“I wondered, ‘Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?‘”

“There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.”

“I felt a great leaping of joy in my heart.”

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

“Welcome Christmas. Bring your cheer, Cheer to all Whos, far and near.”

A short time before Christmas, the discontented fir-tree was the first to fall. As the axe cut through the stem, and divided the pith, the tree fell with a groan to the earth, conscious of pain and faintness, and forgetting all its anticipations of happiness, in sorrow at leaving its home in the forest.

“With a smile to his soul, he descended Mount Crumpet Cheerily blowing “Who! Who!” on his trumpet.”

During the year I stood there I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth.

“Why are they sad and glad and bad? I do not know. Go ask your dad.”

“But this sound wasn’t sad! Why, this sound sounded glad!”

For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.

“Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you.”

“None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or indifference over his inward joy.”

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most of your time.

“And the tree was happy . . .”

I enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquility of mind; I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy.

“Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.”

“Yes, we should have a full day to-day,” he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action.”

″You may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy.”

“Then you will have money and you will be happy.”

“They haven’t an idea of what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness--no life at all.”

“I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears... and she did not run away!...and she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, weeping with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer.”

“He don’t want to die. He wants to keep on living even though he’s so old and there’s nothing to be happy about anymore.”

“Are people so unhappy when they love?” “Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved.”

The sound of the distant breakers made her heart ache with melancholy. She was in the mood when the sea has a saddening effect upon the nerves. It is only when we are very happy, that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.

“Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life, An awful rule and right supremacy; And, to be short, what not that’s sweet and happy.”

“God certainly knows of some happiness for us which He is going to bring out of the trouble, only we must have patience and not run away. And then all at once something happens and we see clearly ourselves that God has had some good thought in His mind all along; but because we cannot see things beforehand, and only know how dreadfully miserable we are, we think it is always going to be so.”

“This was one of those happy days that God grants us sometimes on earth, to give us an idea of the bliss of heaven.”

“Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight.”

“As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy . . . the afternoon passed.”

“Old people are not unhappy. They don’t long for the things we want.”

″‘Nonsense,’ said Mama. ‘Old age isn’t such a tragedy. If he was the only old man in the world -- yes. But he has other old men to keep him company.‘”

“Heidi was never unhappy, for wherever she was she found something to interest or amuse her.”

“One after another our dear ones came running to the opposite bank, testifying in various ways their delight at our return, and hastening up on their side of the river, as we on ours, to the ford at which we had crossed in the morning. We were quickly on the other side, and, full of joy and affection, our happy party was once more united.”

“The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.”

“After many years of joyless life, the blind grandmother had at last found something to make her happy; her days were no longer passed in weariness and darkness, one like the other without pleasure or change, for now she had always something to which she could look forward.”

“If it be the will of God,” said my wife, “to leave us alone on this solitary place, let us be content; and rejoice that we are all together in safety.”

“A noble mind finds its purest joy in the accomplishment of its duty, and to that willingly sacrifices its inclination.”

“‘It has made me better loving you,’ he said on another occasion; ‘it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter.‘”

“What a jolly little fellow it is!”

“Yet little Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it but did not know it. It was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as happy as I did that day, but then again, it was always like that when we were together. I never wanted it to end.”

“I thought they’d be happy for me. They’re supposed to be my friends.”

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

The happiness of one man and one woman is the greatest thing in all the world.

“She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own heart and the agitations of the world.”

“She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organization, should move in the realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic.”

We have to go. I’m almost happy here.

“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace!”

“If you like her, if she makes you happy, and if you feel like you know her--then don’t let her go.”

“Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go. ”

It’s up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they’re going well.

“This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”

“To become a happy person have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in the commonplace, a child’s heart, and spiritual simplicity.”

“I just choose to be happy.”

“The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.”

“If happiness is determined by our thoughts it is necessary to drive off the thoughts which make for depression and discouragement.”

“Our happiness or unhappiness depends to an important degree upon the habit of mind we cultivate.”

″‘This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.’ (Psalm 118:24) Only personalize it and say: ‘I will rejoice and be glad in it.‘”

“There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; no wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, and proud men in old age learn to be wise.”

Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.

“Caring for your possessions is the best way to motivate them to support you, their owner. When you treat your belongings well, they will always respond in kind . . . I take time to ask myself occasionally whether the storage space I’ve set aside for them will make them happy. Storage, after all, is the sacred act of choosing a home for my belongings.”

“In this room, I had sat with patients and explained terminal diagnoses and complex operations; in this room, I had congratulated patients on being cured of a disease and seen their happiness at being returned to their lives; in this room, I had pronounced patients dead . . .”

“But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

“A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy . . . through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.”

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy.’ Once the reason is found . . . one becomes happy automatically.”

“By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’ We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves’ and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all’.”

“I’d stay here, happy forever, playing games forever, and soon I’d forget my mom, and my quest, and maybe even my own name.”

“I like how Mother Teresa put it: ‘Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.’ If you approach life this way, always looking for ways to build instead of to tear down, you’ll be amazed at how much happiness you can give to others and find for yourself.”

“In the Glade, Chuck had become a symbol for him—a beacon that somehow they could make everything right again in the world. Sleep in beds. Get kissed goodnight. Have bacon and eggs for breakfast, go to a real school. Be happy”

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.

“A good deed, “said the prophet Mohammed, ‘is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another.’ Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts on the doer? Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very thing that produces worry and fear and melancholia.”

″‘Here, we have two choices. To be together and miserable or to be together and happy. Mija, we have each other and Abuelita will come. How would she want you to behave? I choose to be happy. So which will you choose?‘”

“Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember ‘Life is too short to be little’”

“When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.”

“I was happy about where I was and overwhelmingly hopeful about the future. For the first time in my life, I felt like an outsider in Middletown. And what turned me into an alien was my optimism.”

“Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.” ― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”

“i have what i have and i am happy i’ve lost what i’ve lost and i am still happy - outlook”

“The girl paused. Then she leaned and held her hand out to Katsa. Something welled up inside Katsa, something she couldn’t quite name. A sort of sad gladness at this little creature who wanted to touch her.”

“In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it, and he sells it before the roof is on: he plants a garden, and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing: he brings a field into tillage, and leaves other men to gather the crops: he embraces a profession, and gives it up: he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards leaves, to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds he has a few days’ vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days, to shake off his happiness. Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which is forever on the wing.”

“Success is getting what you want.. Happiness is wanting what you get.”

″...for each of us who wants to live in happiness and give happiness, there’s another different sort of person wanting to take it away...”

“Don’t wish me happiness I don’t expect to be happy all the time... It’s gotton beyond that somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need them all.”

“Maybe happiness didn’t have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures.”

“My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more.”

“They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent.”

“…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

“Their happy is too loud.”

“The sunset was too beautiful. It almost made Lena feel panicked because she couldn’t save it.”

″‘I never dreamed of such happiness as this, while I was an ugly duckling.‘”

“He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.”

“The men were congratulating one another, talking about what they had accomplished; trying to piece together the sequence of events. They were the victors, happy, proud, full of themselves.”

“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”

“Everybody in the world is seeking happiness—and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

“Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.”

″Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. They’re fundamental. They’re essentially unarguable because they are self-evident. One way to quickly grasp the self-evident nature of principles is to simply consider the absurdity of attempting to live an effective life based on their opposites. I doubt that anyone would seriously consider unfairness, deceit, baseness, uselessness, mediocrity, or degeneration to be a solid foundation for lasting happiness and success.″

“Crayola plus imagination (the ability to create images) - these make for happiness if you are a child. Amazing things, Crayolas. Some petroleum-based wax, some dye, a little binder-not much to them. Until you add the imagination.”

“My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy.”

“Happiness. The enemy of all suffering.”

″If you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.″

“Happiness belongs to the class of things precious and final.”

“She never seemed to be truly happy; she just seemed to be passing time while she waited for something else. She was tired of just existing; she wanted to live.”

″...she was a woman with a million happy memories, who knew what it was like to experience true love and who was ready to experience more life, more love and make new memories.”

“There are worse sins in the world than learning to be happy again.”

He actually caught himself saying things like “Yippee,” as he pranced ridiculously round the house.

“For people with money you and your sister don’t seem to have much fun.”

“It occurred to him that he couldn’t remember the last time he felt happiness. It wasn’t just being sent to Camp Green Lake that had made his life miserable. Before that he’d been unhappy at school, where he had no friends, and bullies like Derrick Dunne picked on him. No one liked him, and the truth was, he didn’t especially like himself.”

“Nobody’s life is filled with perfect little moments. And if it were, they wouldn’t be perfect little moments. They would just be normal. How would you ever know happiness if you never experienced downs?”

″‘We’d better hurry or we’ll be late for dinner,’ I said, breaking into what Finny called my “West Point stride.” Phineas didn’t really dislike West Point in particular or authority in general, but just considered authority the necessary evil against which happiness was achieved by reaction, the backboard which returned all the insults he threw at it.”

“Arthur was happy. Like the man in Eden before the fall, he was enjoying his innocence and fortune.”

″ A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.”

“Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it, or else, for ever and ever, the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.”

“If there is such a thing as complete happiness, it is knowing that you are in the right place.”

“With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”

“And we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing as if there were no power left in us save laughter.”

“Total self-love and acceptance is the only foundation for happiness and the love of others.”

“They offer themselves so sweetly and confidently and willingly, even if it seems that there is no one to appreciate them. Just as though they sang a joyous little song to themselves, that it is so happy to love, even though one is not loved in return.”

“There in their secret place, his feelings bubbled inside him like a stew on the back of the stove--some sad for her in her lonesomeness, but chunks of happiness, too. To be able to be Leslie’s one whole friend in the world as she was his – he couldn’t help being satisfied about that.”

“Harry’s mind was buzzing. He was going to leave the Dursleys. He was going to live with Sirius Black, his parents’ best friend... He felt dazed...”

“And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”

“A mindfulness practitioner is able to generate joy and happiness. It’s not so hard. There’s a little difference between joy and happiness. Joy still has some of the element of excitement or anticipation in it. In happiness, there is ease and freedom.”

“...The miracle is not to walk on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Walk in such a way that you become fully alive, and joy and happiness are possible. That is the miracle that everyone can perform....If you have mindfulness, concentration, and insight then every step you make on this Earth is performing a miracle.”

“Happiness is impermanent, like everything else. In order for happiness to be extended and renewed, you have to learn how to feed your happiness. Nothing can survive without food, including happiness; your happiness can die if you don’t know how to nourish it. If you cut a flower but you don’t put it in some water, the flower will wilt in a few hours. Even if happiness is already manifesting, we have to continue to nourish it.”

“The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.”

“Where there is suffering, there is happiness.”

“Many of us slog through life without conscious awareness or intention. We set ourselves a course and we barrel ahead, without stopping to ask whether this path is fulfilling our most important goals. That’s partly because many of us believe that happiness is not possible in the here and now. We think we need to struggle now so that we will be happy in the future. So we postpone happiness and try to run into the future and attain the conditions of happiness that we don’t have now.”

“These are their religious principles:—That the soul of man is immortal, and that God of His goodness has designed that it should be happy; and that He has, therefore, appointed rewards for good and virtuous actions, and punishments for vice, to be distributed after this life.”

“The French have a song they like to sing, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour etre heureux?” (What are you waiting for in order to be happy?) You can be happy right here and right now.”

“The magistrates never engage the people in unnecessary labour, since the chief end of the constitution is to regulate labour by the necessities of the public, and to allow the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists.”

“Every man’s happiness depends from himself, but behold thy life is almost at an end, whiles affording thyself no respect, thou dost make thy happiness to consist in the souls, and conceits of other men.”

“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”