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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:

And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine.

Edmund Spenser

O Athenians, what toil do I undergo to please you!

Alexander the Great

Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell.

William Shakespeare Henry V (1599)

Happiness is neither within us nor without us, it is the union of ourselves with God.

Blaise Pascal

Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire.

Edward Young

And these are joys, like beauty, but skin deep.

Philip James Bailey Festus (1813)

The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.

Friedrich Nietzsche

On the laugh of a child I am borne to the joy of the King.

George William Russell

I wish you all the joy that you can wish.

William Shakespeare

Joys season'd high, and tasting strong of guilt.

Edward Young

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.
Not in the morning alone, not only at mid-day he charmeth;
Even at setting, the sun is still the same glorious planet.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies,
And they are fools who roam.
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.

Nathaniel Cotton

That side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

Nikos Kazantzakis Report to Greco (1965)

I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water.

Dinah Craik A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne The American Notebooks (1835)

One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.

William Carlos Williams

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.

Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

Cicero

I hold this to be the rule of life, "Too much of anything is bad."

Terence

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