happiness Quotes

“I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog.”

“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”

“And has He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at least they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

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

“The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.”

“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.”

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

“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”

“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.”

“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.”

“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’”

“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…”

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

“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.”

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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“…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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

″...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...”

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

“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.”

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

“Their happy is too loud.”

“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.”

“Look, I’m going to find a way to be happy, and I’d really love to be happy with you, but if I can’t be happy with you, then I’ll find a way to be happy without you.”

″Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.″

“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.”

“We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.”

“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.”

“Maybe just being ugly is why uglies always fight and pick on one another, because they aren’t happy with who they are. Well, I want to be happy, and looking like a real person is the first step.”

“There was something magic in their large and perfect eyes, something that made you want to pay attention to whatever they said, to protect them from any danger, to make them happy. They were so...pretty.”

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

“Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they’re part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They’re not only the ending, but the beginning as well.”

″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.″

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

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

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

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

″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.”

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

“And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)—”

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

“Well! Heaven had destined my uncle to become completely happy.”

“Happiness isn’t’ something that depends on our surroundings, Corrie. It’s something we make inside ourselves.”

″...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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“So then Happiness is manifestly something focal and self-sufficient, being the end of all things which are and may be done.”

“Now of the Chief Good (i.e. of Happiness) men seem to form their notions from the different modes of life, as we might naturally expect: the many and most low conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they are content with the life of sensual enjoyment.”

“They’re happy like that; I’m happy like this. Life has changed completely. At that all her being, even her beauty, became for a moment, dusty and out of date.”

″‘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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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...”

“Every form of happiness is private.”

“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.”

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.

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“The points required in Happiness are found in combination of our account of it. For some think it is virtue, others practical wisdom, others a kind of scientific philosophy; others that it is these, or else some one of them, in combination with pleasure, or at least not independently of it; while others again take in external prosperity. ”

“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.”

“I hustled for joy.”

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

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

“Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.”

″‘How could any Lord have made this world?’ she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for the world to commit; she knew that. No happiness lasted; she knew that.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“For to constitute Happiness, there must be, as we have said, complete virtue and a complete life.”

“By Human Excellence we mean not that of man’s body but that of his soul; for we call Happiness a working of the Soul.”

“The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.”

“Look for happiness under your own roof.”

“How happy we would be if we could find the treasure of which the Gospel speaks; all else would be as nothing. As it is boundless, the more you search for it the greater the riches you will find; let us search unceasingly and let us not stop until we have found it.”

“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.”

“Look for happiness under your own roof.”

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

“Look for happiness under your own roof.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Where there is suffering, there is happiness.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”.”

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

“When you first hear that suffering is a Noble Truth, you might wonder what’s so noble about suffering? The Buddha was saying that if we can recognize suffering, and if we embrace it and look deeply into its roots, then we’ll be able to let go of the habits that feed it and at the same time, find a way to happiness. Suffering has its beneficial aspects. It can be a an excellent teacher.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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 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.”

“It is good to tame the mind, which is difficult to hold in and flighty, rushing wherever it listeth; a tamed mind brings happiness.”

“He who seeking his own happiness does not punish or kill beings who also long for happiness, will find happiness after death.”

“Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

″ ’You should be with someone who can make you happy.’ My heart breaks as I set him free. With all the love I have ever felt for him, I whisper, ‘You deserve that.’ ”

“It’s not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.”

“Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.”

“Thinking of someone to love each day keeps your resentment away!”

“We tend to believe that if we were somewhere else – on vacation, with another partner, in a different career, a different home, a different circumstance – somehow we would be happier and more content. We wouldn’t!”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.

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.

“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.”

“If we would just slow down, happiness would catch up to us.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“If you take your happiness and put it in someone’s hands, sooner or later, she is going to break it. If you give your happiness to someone else, she can always take it away. Then if happiness can only come from inside of you and is the result of your love, you are responsible for your happiness.”

“In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was everything”

“the real mission you have in life is to make yourself happy, and in order to be happy, you have to look at what you believe, the way you judge yourself, the way you victimize yourself”

″...that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

“To fight abstraction you must have something of it in your own make-up . . . Abstraction for him was all that stood in the way of happiness.”

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy.”

“Look, Son, if there’s one thing I’ve figured out about life, it’s that if you want to be happy, you have to learn how to be happy on your own.”

“Communication is health; communication is happiness, communication –” he muttered.”

“If we are to feel the positive feelings of love, happiness, trust, and gratitude, we periodically also have to feel anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow.”

“I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.”

“I didn’t feel sad or happy. I didn’t feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I’d done wrong, in getting myself here, I’d done right.”

“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.”

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

“When I was a little girl fairy tales were my favorite books because even before you opened them you knew how they are going to end. Happily ever after.”

“One of the greatest days of my life was when I came to understand that other people’s approval and my happiness were not related.”

“As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble.”

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

“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.”

“It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.”

“It occurs to me how close happiness and sadness are. So closely knitted together. Such a thin line, a thread-like divide that in the midst of emotions, it trembles, blurring the territory of exact opposites ... how quickly a moment of love was snapped away to a moment of hate ... Of how love and war stand upon the very same foundations.”

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

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

“As for Houshang, Zozo’s husband, he was a CEO in Iran, but in Austria, he was nothing.”

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

“It was a good morning, there were high white clouds above the mountains. It had rained a little in the night and it was fresh and cool on the plateau, and there was a wonderful view. We all felt good and we felt healthy, and I felt quite friendly to Cohn. You could not be upset about anything on a day like that. That was the last day before the fiesta.”

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.”

“In the Basque country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages look well-off and clean… the houses in the villages had red tiled roofs, and then the road turned off and commenced to climb and we were going way up close along a hillside, with a valley below and hills stretched off back toward the sea.”

“And in the fireplace itself, in a black pan set on a high wire rack, peanuts roasted over the hickory fire as the waning light of day swiftly deepened into a fine velvet night speckled with white forerunners of a coming snow, and the warm sound of husky voices and rising laughter mingled in tales of sorrow and happiness and days past but not forgotten.”

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

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

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

“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.”

″‘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.‘”

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

“But Cody’s oldfashioned family tiptoe sneak carries that strange apocalyptic burst of gold he somehow always manages to produce, like I said elsewhere the time in Mexico he drove an old car over a rutted road very slowly as we were all high on tea and I saw golden Heaven, or the other times he’s always seemed so golden like as I say in a davenport of some sort in Heaven in the golden top of Heaven.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Thousands of men, it is true, will have to pay for my happiness with their lives; but what is that to me, provided I see you again! All this is perhaps folly--perhaps insanity; but tell me what woman has a lover more truly in love; what queen a servant more ardent.”

“He taught us the are of unqualified love. How to give it, how to accept it. Where there is that, most other pieces fall into place.”

“...people hold onto life, no matter how miserable a situation they may be in, because they don’t know any other way of thinking or acting, also because they have the illusion that there is a chance they may find happiness someday or they may somehow come into money.”

We have to go. I’m almost happy here.

″‘You are young,’ replied Athos, ‘and your bitter recollections have time to be changed into sweet remembrances.‘”

“That last thing is what you can’t get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once for all.”

“The scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people happier at a family income of around seventy-five thousand dollars a year. After that, what economists call “diminishing marginal returns”sets in.”

“I am calm and peaceful. I will not let people or circumstances upset me. I will rise above every difficulty, knowing that God has given me the power to remain calm. I choose to live my life happy, bloom where I am planted, and let God fight my battles.”

“The third ‘right’?—the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives—but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can ensure that I will catch it.”

“I made a very important discovery at Camp Currie. Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you’ve ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don’t need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it, and he’s as happy as a worm in an apple—asleep.”

″ One of the most interesting and remarkable things Christians learn is that laughter does not exclude weeping. Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness of the redeemed.”

“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. ”

“He felt as though he were failing in practically every area of his life. Lately, happiness seemed as distant and unattainable to him as space travel. He hadn’t always felt this way. There had been a long period of time during which he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people’s lives. Mistakes are made, regrets form, and all that was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious. ”

“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.”

“I love you, Gabby, more than you’ll ever know. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a wife. You’re every hope and every dream I’ve ever had, and you’ve made me happier than any man could possibly be. I don’t ever want to give that up. I can’t.”

“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.”

“May all sentient beings be endowed with happiness! May they all be separated from suffering and its causes! May they be endowed with joy, free from suffering! May they abide in equanimity, free from attachment or aversion!”

“I just choose to be happy.”

“He who always greets and constantly reveres the aged, four things will increase to him, viz. life, beauty, happiness, power. But he who lives a hundred years, vicious and unrestrained, a life of one day is better if a man is virtuous and reflecting. And he who lives a hundred years, ignorant and unrestrained, a life of one day is better if a man is wise and reflecting.And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength. And he who lives a hundred years, not seeing beginning and end, a life of one day is better if a man sees beginning and end. And he who lives a hundred years, not seeing the immortal place, a life of one day is better if a man sees the immortal place. And he who lives a hundred years, not seeing the highest law, a life of one day is better if a man sees the highest law.”

“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.”

“naturally, we are all caught in downmoods, it’s a matter of chemical imbalance and an existence which, at times, seems to forbid any real chance at happiness.”

“Don’t be afraid to try new things– it is only important that you do something that fuels you. Discovering how you can you contribute to the world in a unique way makes you feel useful, inspired, and alive. It doesn’t have to come in some pretty package or make sense to anyone else, just you.”

“Everyone wants happiness. No one wants pain. But you can have a rainbow without a little rain.”

“It’s real easy, he doesn’t weigh much and I’m pretty sure I remember looking back and seeing him up in the wagon happy as can be, like he’s really enjoying the ride and not embarrassed to have me pulling him around.”

“Beauty and love pass, I know… Oh. there’s sadness, too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses.”

“You are damaged and broken and unhinged. But so are shooting stars and comets.”

“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.”

″‘Hmm!’ said the Fairy Crustacea. ‘Wit, Charm, Courage, Health, Wisdom, Grace ... Good gracious, poor child! Well, thank goodness my magic is stronger than anyone else’s.’ She raised her twisty coral stick and waved it three times over the cradle of the seventh princess. ‘My child,’ said the Fairy Crustacea, ‘I am going to give you something that will probably bring you more happiness than all these fal-lals and fripperies put together. You shall be Ordinary!’

“Call no man happy until he is dead.”

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

“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.”

“I wish you all a long and happy life. ”

“In my dreams, I was always free. I was happy, and I was with him. (...) It was always heaven like this with Trace. My own piece of paradise within the burning inferno.”

“It didn’t matter. She was not happy and never had been. Why was life so inadequate, why did the things she depended on turn immediately to dust?… Yet if somewhere there existed a strong, handsome being, with a valorous nature, at once exalted and refined, with the heart of a poet in the shape of an angel, a lyre with strings of brass, sounding elegiac epithalamiums to the heavens, then why mightn’t she, by chance, find him?”

“If there’s one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy-something we could all do with more of in our lives.”

“It made me happy to have someone react like that to something I made.”

“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.”

“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”

“Love is taking a few steps backward, maybe even more…to give way to the happiness of the person you love.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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 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?”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”

“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.‘”

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

“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.”