Quotes About Happiness

When a man and woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is energized and victorious. They walk better, their digestion improves, they think more clearly, their secret worries drop away, the world is fresh and interesting, and they can do more than they dreamed that they could do. In love of this kind sexual intimacy is not the dead end of desire as it is in romantic or promiscuous love, but periodic affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading an active life.

Happiness doesn't just happen. I'm convinced that for the most part, those who focus their minds on it, obtain it.

Well, I don't think just because people are in a relationship that they're happy. I don't think relationships necessarily make people happy. You just are happy or you're not happy.

Life may not be perfect, at least it offered moments that were perfect enough.

I wished there was a way to keep that in a bottle, that one moment of wonderful perfect, so I could open it up whenever I needed to get a good whiff.

But 'contentment'. Is that happiness? Or is that only resignation wearing a funny hat?

There is a strong connection between our ability to use our hands in useful work, and our ability to find happiness in daily life... daily repetitive tasks (are) the compulsive calmness that infuses our pedestrian chores with poetry. - Annie Modessitt

A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures.

Look," I say at last. 'You know me. You know my life. I always thought-or hoped-" "You thought what?" "I just want to be happy," I finally say. She stares at me hard. "You have been," she says.

You're into happiness?" the technician says, her eyes never leaving the computer screen. "I'm writing a book about it," I say. "About happiness?" she says. "Yes," I say. " Didn't the Dali Lama already write that book?

For T.J., it's simply an article of faith that happiness will be the natural by-product of success.

perhaps it is true that, as Bertrand Russell once suggested, "to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

is envy just the illusion that the problem of happiness can be solved?

And is there a difference, I wonder, watching the ease with which T.J. settles back into her reading, between the happiness of being happy and the happiness of being happy because you think someone might be less happy than you?

When I found out I got this job, I cried, of course - I'm a girly-girl - and then I called my dad, and he cried, too. On so many levels, this is a thrill for me.

Life and love get complicated. But love and the right relationship is worth it.

Because deep down inside, she was scared. Scared of being alone, scared of being an outsider. Scared that she had all of her chances of happiness; and blown each and every one of them.

Because that's the thing with getting what you want: all that yearning and dreaming and fantasizing leaves a great big hole that can only be filled with more yearning and dreaming and fantasizing.

Her mother existed entirely in the moment. And she made every moment sparkle.

But he's your boyfriend?' 'Partner,' she said, 'he's my partner. I don't own him. He doesn't own me. All that matters is his happiness.' 'Yes,' I said thoughtfully. 'But what about yours?' She didn't reply.

Five minutes ago her joys in life had been small, anticipated, longed-for, hard-earned and saved-up-for, inconsequential little splurges that meant nothing in the scheme of things but gave the flat surface of her life enough sparkles to make it worth getting out of bed every morning to go and do a job which she liked but didn't love.

May was like the Friday night of summer:

cats stretched out in puddles of sunshine;

And it occurs to her for the very first time that maybe Hanna isn't intrinsically unhappy. That maybe she just doesn't like her.