Quotes About Happiness

Ah! How much happiness there is in life if we will only have the patience to wait for it.

God be praised for His mercy! I have seen a little sunshine-- I have had a happy time.

Nature's voice and Nature's beauty---God's soothing and purifying angels of the soul---speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at such times as these.

Both Stoicism and Epicureanism—. the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure—were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved;

Life is not made for happiness, but for achievement. The history of the world is not the theatre of happiness; periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony; and this dull content is unworthy of man. History is made only in those periods in which the contradictions of reality are being resolved by growth, as the hesitations of and awkwardness of youth pass into the ease and order of maturity.

The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness. This

To be happy, one must be as ignorant as youth. Youth thinks that willing and striving are joys; it has not yet discovered the weary insatiableness of desire, and the fruitlessness of fulfilment; it does not yet see the inevitableness of defeat.

The only thing unqualifiedly good in this world is a good will - the will to follow the moral law, regardless of profit or loss for ourselves. Never mind your happiness; do your duty. Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. Let us seek the happiness in others; but for ourselves, perfection - whether it bring us happiness or pain.

Yet he was not all unhappy: the peace and quiet which he had never had when sane were his now; Nature had had mercy on him when she made him mad. He caught his sister once weeping as she looked at him, and he could not understand her tears: "Lisbeth," he asked, "why do you cry? Are we not happy?" On one occasion he heard talk of books; his pale face lit up; "Ah!" he said, brightening, "I too have written

Only a philosopher can be happy in marriage, and philosophers do not marry.

One proof of the excellence of this amiable woman's character is that all who loved her loved each other, even jealousy and rivalry submitting to the more powerful sentiment with which she inspired them; and I never saw any of those who surrounded her entertain the least ill will among themselves. Let the reader pause a moment in this encomium, and if he can recollect any other woman who deserves it, let him attach himself to her if he would obtain happiness.

I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire.

The simplest meaning of life, then, is joy -- the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use. Perhaps if we used our arms and legs we would be happy too;

A bit of wisdom is a joy forever.

virtue is not news, and virtuous men, like happy nations, have no history.

Nor may we define progress in terms of happiness, for idiots are happier than geniuses, and those whom we most respect seek not happiness but greatness.

The secret of peace is not to make our achievements equal to our desires, but to lower our desires to the level of our achievements. "If what you have seems insufficient to you," said the Roman Stoic Seneca (d. 65 A.D.), "then, though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.

To be happy means to be self-sufficient.

She told him that every ring in the window for sale was a tale of woe, a ductile band of happiness that had been shaped easily into sorrow

There's no fear when you're having fun.

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sun rise.

Man was made for joy and woe Then when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine A clothing for the soul to bind.

For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and breath And the want Of thought is death Then am I A happy fly If I live Or if I die

How can a bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing?