Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place.  But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.  ~E.L. Konigsburg

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy.  ~Cynthia Nelms

Happiness is always a by-product.  It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular.  But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.  ~Robertson Davies

Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.  ~Norm Papernick

Some pursue happiness, others create it.  ~Anon

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.  ~Epictetus

Gather the crumbs of happiness and they will make you a loaf of contentment.  ~Anon

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.  ~George Bernard Shaw

Happiness is the natural flower of duty.  ~Phillips Brooks

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?  ~Albert Camus

If you search the world for happiness, you may find it in the end, for the world is round and will lead you back to your door.  ~Robert Brault

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  ~Marcel Proust

Whoever is happy will make others happy too. ~Anne Frank

For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.  ~Anon

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.  ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.  ~Mildred Barthel

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. ~Albert Schweitzer

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. ~Anne Frank

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. ~Benjamin Disraeli

The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live. ~Bertrand Russell

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always want to have something else or something more. ~Brother David Steindl-Rast

Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others. ~Lord Buddha

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

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. ~Alexandre Dumas

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. ~Carl Jung

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? ~Charles Schulz

The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration. ~Claude Monet

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

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations. ~Edward De Bono

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.  ~Thomas Jefferson

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this? ~Henry David Thoreau

All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within. ~Horace Friess

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.  ~Charles Kingsley

You need to learn to be happy by nature, because you'll seldom have the chance to be happy by circumstance.  ~Lavetta Sue Wegman

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys.  If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.  ~Fyodor Dostoevsky

What a wonderful life I've had!  I only wish I'd realized it sooner.  ~Colette

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.  ~James Openheim

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think.  Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.  ~A.A. Milne

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness.  Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.  ~H. Jackson Browne

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness.  Poverty and wealth have both failed.  ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard

Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other.  When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack.  ~Hazelmarie Elliott (“Mattie”)

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 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

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.  ~St. Augustine

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are two things to aim at in life:  first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it.  Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.  ~Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts, 1931

This is my "depressed stance."  When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand.  The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better.  If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this.  ~Charlie Brown

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.  ~Robert Frost

The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash.  ~Anon

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.  ~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Many people are extremely happy, but are absolutely worthless to society.  ~Charles Gow

The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind. ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure. ~Francois De Motteville

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves. ~James M. Barrie

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. ~John Barrymore

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure. ~John D. Rockefeller

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. ~M. Scott Peck

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. ~Peyton Conway March

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family. ~Thomas Jefferson

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. ~George Burns

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. ~George Sand

When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. ~H.H. The Dalai Lama

All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. ~H.H. The Dalai Lama

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 and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves. ~Helen Keller

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.  ~Robert S. Lynd

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase:  if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.  ~C.P. Snow

Happiness:  an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot:  they amount to fourteen.  ~Abd-El-Raham

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.  ~Bertrand Russell

You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness.  ~Anon

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert.  He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.  He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself.  He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day.  ~W. Beran Wolfe

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.  You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.  ~Albert Camus

Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other.  ~Norman Bradburn

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.  ~Josh Billings

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.  ~William Feather

Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

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

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.  ~Joseph Addison

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought.  Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.  ~Samuel Johnson

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.  ~Freya Stark, The Journey's Echo

In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness - otherwise how would you know when you're happy?  ~Leslie Caron

On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.  ~William R. Inge

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

Many people 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

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest. ~Henry David Thoreau

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.  ~Don Marquis

When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive.  Call him a breathing corpse.  ~Sophocles

Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.  ~Charles Caleb Colton

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.  ~Guilaume Apollinaire

When you're really happy, the birds chirp and the sun shines even on cold dark winter nights - and flowers will bloom on a barren land.  ~Grey Livingston

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness.  You have to catch it yourself.  ~Benjamin Franklin

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.  ~Robert Anthony

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.  ~Mark Twain

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.  ~Edith Wharton

To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all. ~Helen Rowland

There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them. ~Anthony de Mello

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. ~Epictetus

It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him. ~Marquerite Duras

To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness. ~Mary Stuart

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.  ~John Stuart Mill,Autobiography, 1873

We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.  ~Joseph Roux

As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.  ~Andrew Delbanco

So long as we can lose any happiness, we possess some.  ~Booth Tarkington

Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.  ~Gretta Brooker Palmer

Take care of yourself. Good health is everyone's major source of wealth. Without it, happiness is almost impossible. ~Anon

The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved — loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. ~Victor Hugo

I can only think of one thing greater than being happy and that is to help another to be happy, too. ~Jim Thomson

When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.  ~Niccolo Machiavelli

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.  ~Ernest Dimnet

One joy scatters a hundred griefs.  ~Chinese Proverb

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Candida, 1898

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.  ~William Saroyan

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.  ~Anton Chekhov

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.  ~Douglas Jerrold

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.  ~Don Herold

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.  ~Taisen Deshimaru

It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely.  ~Georges Duhamel

All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out. ~Albert Camus

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. ~Albert Schweitzer

Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.
~Amy Lowell

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. ~Anne Frank

Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient. ~Aristotle

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness. ~Baruch Spinoza

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig 

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life. ~Oscar Wilde

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things. ~Albert Einstein

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~Lord Buddha

Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections. ~Anon

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion. ~Jean Jacques Rousseau


(Compiled by Aparna Chatterjee)

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