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.
Little is needed to make a wise man happy, but nothing can content a fool.
Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.
Alluring pleasure is said to have softened the savage dispositions (of early mankind).
Before he is dead and buried no one ought to be called happy.
The loss of wealth is loss of dirt,
As sages in all times assert;
The happy man's without a shirt.
We all need joy, and we can all receive joy in only one way, by adding to the joy of others.
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
The wise grows it under his feet.
Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
Happiness is a battle to be waged and not a feeling to be awaited.
But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to vulgar taste.
Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.