Quotes About Happiness

In your mind, change the name of every day to Saturday. And change the name of work to play.

For years now I had convinced myself that the sadness of the memories weighed more and lasted longer than the moments of happiness themselves. So I had, through some crude emotional mathematics, decided it was better not to seek out love or companionship or even friendship.

You could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in São Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love.

How much extra happiness am I acquiring? Why am I wanting so much more than I need? Wouldn't I be happier learning to appreciate what I already have?

It is easier to learn to be soaked and happy than to learn how to stop the rain.

The whole of consumerism is based on us wanting the next thing rather than the present thing we already have. This is an almost perfect recipe for unhappiness.

If we demand the future be free from suffering in order to be happy; we can't be happy.

Happiness is not out here. It is in there.

Want,' she told her, in a measured tone, 'is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.

It is the simplest, purest joy on earth, I realize, to make someone you care about laugh

No physical appearance is worth not eating pasta for.

Now, Nikolas was a happy boy. Well, actually, no. He would have told you he was happy, if you asked him, and he certainly tried to be happy, but sometimes being happy is quite tricky. I suppose what I am saying is that Nikloas was a boy who believed in happiness, the way he believed in elves and trolls and pixies, but he had never actually seen an elf or a troll or a pixie, and he hadn't really seen proper happiness either. At least, not for a very long time. He didn't have it easy.

To teach feels like you are a guardian of time itself, protecting the future happiness of the world via the minds that are yet to shape it.

it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunize you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

It is hard to predict, isn't it?' she asked, looking blankly in front of her as she moved a black bishop across the board to take a white pawn. 'The things that will make us happy'.

an ordinary life is not a guarantee of happiness.

She didn't need a vineyard or a Californian sunset to be happy. She didn't even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential.

Maybe happiness is about what we can give. Maybe happiness is not a butterfly we can catch with a net. Maybe there is no certain way to be happy. Maybe there are only maybes. If (as Emily Dickinson said) "Forever—is composed of Nows—," maybe the nows are made of maybes. Maybe the point of life is to give up certainty and to embrace life's beautiful uncertainty

the key to happiness – or that even more desired thing, calmness – lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts. The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them.

That's the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything.

It's hard to predict, isn't? The things that will make us happy

An online profile of your best friend is not your best friend. A status update about a day in the park is not a day in the park. And the desire to tell the world about how happy you are is not how happy you are.

Happiness occurs when you for get who you're expected to be. And what you're expected to do. Happiness is an accident of self acceptance. It's the warm breeze you feel when you open the door to who you are.

And also, of course, there is the ultimate, all-important question: does it have a dog in it? (This book, by the way, does indeed have a dog in it, and this fact would very much excite a human but unfortunately does nothing for you.)