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.
Pleasure blinds (so to speak) the eyes of the mind, and has no fellowship with virtue.
Plato divinely calls pleasure the bait of evil, inasmuch as men are caught by it as fish by a hook.
The highest happiness, the purest joys of life, wear out at last.
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy because
We have been glad of yore.
There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make Happiness.