Happiness Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.

Bertrand Russell

I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness.

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.

Purity of morals [is] the only sure foundation of public happiness in any country.

George Washington

I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom & happiness of man.

Thomas Jefferson

We maintain, and have said in the Ethics, if the arguments there adduced are of any value, that happiness is the realization and perfect exercise of virtue, and this not conditional, but absolute. And I used the term 'conditional' to express that which is indispensable, and 'absolute' to express that which is good in itself.

So the first step in seeking happiness is learning. We first have to learn how negative emotions and behaviors are harmful to us and how positive emotions are helpful.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment.

Charles Dickens

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

William Faulkner

The right to happiness is fundamental; men live so little time and die alone.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition. Your qualifications are not your life.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it is what I have steadfastly believed.

Thomas Jefferson

Wine is a sign of happiness, love and plenty, how many of our adolescents and young people sense that these are no longer found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love?

And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.

Believing that the happiness of mankind is best promoted by the useful pursuits of peace, that on these alone a stable prosperity can be founded, that the evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come, I have used my best endeavors to keep our country uncommitted in the troubles which afflict Europe, and which assail us on every side.

Thomas Jefferson

Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!

Edgar Allan Poe

Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men that comes chiefly through their work.

Bertrand Russell

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

Catherine [...] enjoyed her usual happiness with Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

George Bernard Shaw

For if unhappiness develops the forces of the mind, happiness alone is salutary to the body.

My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.

Henry David Thoreau