Skip to content

Happiness Quotes

Most happiness quotes online are cheerful. The sourced ones on this page often are not. Bertrand Russell wrote in Sceptical Essays (1928) that after enjoying ourselves, our greatest pleasure is preventing others from enjoying themselves. Macaulay’s History of England (1849) has the Puritan who hated bear-baiting not because it hurt the bear but because it pleased the spectators. Tom Robbins gave the most practical advice in a 2002 interview: the key to self-generated happiness is refusing to take yourself too seriously.

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive” is credited to Marcus Aurelius and flagged as misattributed. “No man is happy who does not think himself so” is credited to Publilius Syrus and marked disputed.

Random quote on Happiness

Most quoted on happiness:

Oh, frabjous day! Callooh. Callay!
He chortled in his joy.

Lewis Carroll

How fading are the joys we dote upon!
Like apparitions seen and gone.
But those which soonest take their flight
Are the most exquisite and strong,—
Like angels’ visits, short and bright;
Mortality ’s too weak to bear them long.

John Norris

Purification of the soul ... consists in scorning the pleasures that arise through the senses, in not feasting the eyes on the silly exhibitions of jugglers or on the sight of bodies which gives the spur to sensual pleasure, in not permitting licentious songs to enter through the ears and drench your souls.

Basil of Caesarea

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. There is the situation or the fact, and here are my thoughts about it. Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

Eckhart Tolle Oneness With All Life: Inspirational Selections from A New Earth (2008)

Unlike joy, which is a momentary experience, localized in specific times and reasons, happiness perhaps has a more general meaning. Aristotle warned that a life can only be judged happy after it has been fulfilled. I would also use another formula, which I like very much and which says: happy is that life which realizes in maturity (or old age) the dream of youth.

Carlo Sini

Many primitive peoples, when they don’t have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get “bored,” i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.

Theodore Kaczynski Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

First of all, happiness has two aspects: one is the successful execution of a rational plan (the schedule of activities and aims) which a person strives to realize, the other is his state of mind, his sure confidence supported by good reasons that his success will endure. Being happy involves both a certain achievement in action and a rational assurance about the outcome.

John Rawls

God is merely tuning the soul, as an instrument, in this life. And these joys of the Christian, are only the notes and chords that are sounded out in the preparation — preludes to the perfect harmony that shall flood the soul — forerunners of the perfected and rapturous joy that shall bless the soul, in that exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

Herrick Johnson

Few have written about the joy of political life, the sense of comradeship and achievement. As activists we need to believe in vision and imagination; communicate a sense of possibility. Bleakness is not the whole story, and escape is not the only alternative. Change is possible.

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz The Issue is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence and Resistance (1992)

Happiness is a difficult lesson to learn; it is for mankind a totally new experience and Christ will have to teach men how to handle happiness correctly, to overcome the ancient habits of misery, and thus to know the meaning of true joy. (Chapter 5)

Alice Bailey The Reappearance of the Christ (1947)

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The Ploughboy is whooping—anon—anon!
There's joy in the mountains:
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone.

William Wordsworth

They have a secret instinct which impels them to seek amusement and occupation abroad, and which arises from the sense of their constant unhappiness. They have another secret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of our original nature, which teaches them that happiness in reality consists only in rest and not in stir.

Blaise Pascal

Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

Aristotle

I have never served a work as I would like to, but I do try, with each book, to serve to the best of my ability, and this attempt at serving is the greatest privilege and the greatest joy that I know.

Madeleine L'Engle The Irrational Season (1977)

Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul.

Clarence Darrow

Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. … At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question “What will make me happy?” as “What will make me healthy?” … Our souls do not spell out their troubles.

Alain de Botton The Consolations of Philosophy (2000)

Pleasant feeling is impermanent, conditioned, dependently-arisen, bound to decay, to vanish, to fade away, to cease—and so too are painful feeling and neutral feeling. So anyone who, on experiencing a pleasant feeling, thinks: "This is my self", must, at the cessation of that pleasant feeling, think: "My self has gone!"

Gautama Buddha

Be it even over our bleaching bones the truth will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth! Because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.

Leon Trotsky

Rejoice evermore in your Redeemer,— in His truth — His person — His almighty grace — His everlasting faithfulness — His precious blood whose efficacy reaches farther than the eye of your conscience ever penetrated, and cleanses you from a sin- fulness more inveterate than you have ever conceived to be yours.

Richard Fuller

If a man ... does not understand that the object of his life is progress, that God’s Will for him is that he shall grow to be something better and nobler than he is now, then also he will bring unhappiness and suffering upon himself, because he will be likely to live for the lower side of life only, and that lower side of life never finally satisfies the inner man.

Charles Webster Leadbeater

Related topics