Quotes About Happiness

It's indecent for anyone to be this happy, Tracy Whitney thought.

I'm alive, she thought. No one is born happy. Everyone has to make his own happiness. I'm a survivor. I'm young and I'm healthy and wonderful things are going to happen.

The great majority of people hate what they're doing, Mr Douglas. Instead of devising ways to get into something they like, they remain trapped all their lives, like brainless insects. It's rare to find a man who loves his work.

The great majority of people hate what they're doing, Mr Douglas. Instead of devising ways to get into something they like, they remain trapped all their lives, like brainless insects. It's rare to find a man who loves his work. Almost invariably when you find such a man, he is a success.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments. [p.111]

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.

It is that we are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.

We are never so vulnerable as when we love, and never so hopelessly unhappy as when we lose the object of our love.

This is how men ought to be, in order to be happy and to make others happy; but you have to reckon on their not being like that

Religion interferes with this play of selection and adaptation by forcing on everyone indiscriminately its own path to the attainment of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in reducing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world by means of delusion; and this presupposes the intimidation of the intelligence.

what the behavior of men themselves reveals as the purpose and object of their lives, what they demand of life and wish to attain in it. The answer to this can hardly be in doubt: they seek happiness, they want to become happy and remain so.

We will turn, therefore, to the less ambitious problem: what the behaviour of men themselves reveals as the purpose and object of their lives, what they demand of life and wish to attain in it. The answer to this can hardly be in doubt: they seek happiness, they want to become happy and to remain so.

We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things.

Happiness is the belated fulfilment of a prehistoric wish. For this reason wealth brings so little happiness. Money was not a childhood wish.

And I will go on kissing you till you are strong and gay and happy — and if they haven't died, they are still alive today.

On découvrit alors que l'homme devient névrosé parce qu'il ne peut supporter le degré de renoncement exigé par la société au nom de son idéal culturel, et l'on en conclut qu'abolir ou diminuer notablement ces exigences signifierait un retour à des possibilités de bonheur.   Il est encore une autre cause de désillusion.

It was found that men become neurotic because they cannot tolerate the degree of privation that society imposes on them in virtue of its cultural ideals, and it was supposed that a return to greater possibilities of happiness would ensue if these standards were abolished or greatly relaxed.

felicidad, surge de la satisfacción, casi siempre instantánea, de necesidades acumuladas que han alcanzado elevada tensión, y de acuerdo con esta índole sólo puede darse como fenómeno episódico.

Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of the enjoyment.

Happiness is a child's dream fulfilled in maturity.

Die Strenge der ethischen Forderungen würde nicht viel schaden, wenn die Erziehung sagte: So sollten die Menschen sein, um glücklich zu werden und andere glücklich zu machen; aber man muß damit rechnen, daß sie nicht so sind. Anstatt dessen läßt man den Jugendlichen glauben, daß alle anderen die ethischen Vorschriften erfüllen, also tugendhaft sind. Damit begründet man die Forderung, daß er auch so werde.

Mit Sicherheit weiß ich nur das eine, daß die Werturteile der Menschen unbedingt von ihren Glückswünschen geleitet werden, also ein Versuch sind, ihre Illusionen mit Argumenten zu stützen. Die Schicksalsfrage der Menschenart scheint mir zu sein, ob und in welchem Maße es ihrer Kulturentwicklung gelingen wird, der Störung des Zusammenlebens durch den menschlichen Aggressions- und Selbstvernichtungstrieb Herr zu werden.