Quotes About Happiness

According to the Buddha's teachings, the most basic condition for happiness is freedom. Here we do not mean political freedom, but freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and delusion. These mental formations are described by the Buddha as poisons. As long as these poisons are still in our heart, happiness cannot be possible.

Suffering is not objective. It depends largely on the way you perceive. There are things that cause you to suffer but do not cause others to suffer. There are things that bring you joy but do not bring others joy.

That's why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be this way.

He had some impression that happiness was beyond him and everything was coming down, and that life could not be grasped but only lived.

Beauty is the promise of happiness . . .

Does sex make life worth living? Didn't you say, the other day, 'Our lives are only as good as our orgasms'?

You see people truly when they enjoy the most.

Whoever thought that pleasure makes you happy?

I have lost my relish for living. I am apathetic and most of the time want nothing, except to understand why there hasn't been more happiness here. Is it like this for everyone? Is this all you get? Is this the most there could be?

It is because we know happiness that we want to be happy, and since nothing is more certain than our wanting to be happy (beatum esse velle), our notion of happiness guides us in determining the respective goods that then became objects of our desires.

La richiesta universale di felicità e infelicità largamente diffusa nella nostra società sono i segni più convincenti che viviamo in una società dominata dal lavoro, ma che non ha abbastanza lavoro per esserne appagata.

The universal demand for happiness and the widespread unhappiness in our society (and these are but two sides of the same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we have begun to live in a labor society which lacks enough laboring to keep it contented. For only the animal laborans, and neither the craftsman nor the man of action, has ever demanded to be 'happy' or thought that mortal men could be happy.

The happiness achieved in isolation from the world and enjoyed within the confines of one's own private existence can never be anything but the famous "absence of pain," a definition on which all variations of consistent sensualism must agree.

the concept of happiness is present in us through a consciousness that is equated with memory (that is, since happiness is not an "innate" but a remembered idea), this "outside the human condition" actually means before human existence.

Augustine asks, how do I remember the "happy life"? He answers: Is it like the way we remember joy? Perhaps so, for even when I am sad, I remember joy, just as when I am miserable, I remember the happy life. But I never saw, or heard, or smelled, or tasted joy with a bodily sense. I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced and knowledge of it has clung to my memory.

The happy life is not recalled as past, pure and simple, without further relevance for the present. Insofar as the happy life is remembered, it is part and parcel of the present and inspires our desires and expectations for the future. The point about remembering joy when we are sad is that we hope for its eventual return, just as in remembering it while in a state of joy we actually fear that sadness may come back.

Augustine arrives at "the camps and vast palaces of memory."11 There he finds the notion of the "happy life," which is his origin and as such the quintessence of his being. The absolute future turns out to be the ultimate past and the way to reach it is through remembrance.

The universal demand for happiness and the widespread unhappiness in our society (and these are but two sides of the same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we have begun to live in a labor society which lacks enough laboring to keep it contented. For only the animal laborans, and neither the craftsman nor the man of action, has ever demanded to be happy or thought that mortal men could be happy.

A happy heart can walk in triumphant indifference through a sea of external trouble; while internal anguish cannot find happiness in the most favorable surroundings.

Perfect obedience would be perfect happiness, if only we had perfect confidence in the power we were obeying.

He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him;

And they both sat there, grown up, yet children at heart; and it was summer, - warm, beautiful summer.

I never dreamed of such happiness as this, while I was an ugly duckling.