Quotes About Happiness

Naïve optimists have celebrated science – that is to say: the techniques of mastering life that are based on science – as the road to happiness; but I think I may be allowed to ignore this [idea] completely, in view of Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those "ultimate men" who have "invented happiness". Who believes it, apart from a few overgrown children occupying academic or editorial chairs?

In time I came to understand that out of the misery and murk of their lives the Russian people had learned to make sorrow a diversion, to play with it like a child's toy; seldom are they diffident about showing their happiness. And so, through their tedious weekdays, they made a carnival of grief; a fire is entertainment; and on a vacant face a bruise becomes an adornment.

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.

Because joy and life exist nowhere but the present.

We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

We must have the courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.

If you intend to insist on justice in order to live a successful and happy life, you will not do so in this lifetime, on this planet.

I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, or enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence. They will be happy when they get married, when they get a better job, when they get the house paid for, when they get the children through college, when they have completed some task or won some victory. Invariably, they are disappointed.

Learning the happiness habit, you become a master instead of a slave, or as Robert Louis Stevenson said, "The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.

The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is simply "a state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time.

Happiness is not the reward of virtue," said Spinoza in his book Ethics, "but virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain our lusts; but, on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore are we able to restrain them.

I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace," said the Caliph Abd al-Rahman I, the eighth-century ruler of Iberia, "beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot; they amount to fourteen.

You can be happy now as well as every single day you are working toward achieving your goals. When you discover happiness along the way—instead of expecting that you can only be happy once you've achieved a goal— then you've already fulfilled the promise of Psycho-Cybernetics.

The underlying emotional problem has the same common denominator in every patient. This common denominator is that the patient has forgotten how, or probably never learned how, to control his present thinking to produce enjoyment.

When the failure-type personality looks for a scapegoat or excuse for his failure, he often blames society, "the system," life, "the breaks." He resents the success and happiness of others because it is proof to him that life is shortchanging him and he is being treated unfairly.

If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy—period! Not happy "because of.

Perhaps most important of all, we will learn how chronically unhappy people have learned to enjoy life by "experiencing" happiness!

This Creative Mechanism within you is impersonal. It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending on the goals that you yourself set for it. Present it with "success goals," and it functions as a Success Mechanism. Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as impersonally, and just as faithfully, as a Failure Mechanism.

Today I am more convinced than ever that what each of us really wants, deep down, is more life. Happiness, success, peace of mind

After you've done this, you can go back into your past and find a "successful" memory, an occasion when you did something well. Again, this could be as simple as tying your shoes for the first time or writing your name in school. When it happened is irrelevant. How "big" the success was doesn't matter either. All that matters is that the memory triggers a positive, happy, feel-good experience in you right now.

It is not the child who is taught about love but the child who has experienced love that grows into a healthy, happy, well-adjusted adult.

You can be happier," I said, "by not adding your own opinion to the facts. It is a fact that you lost $200,000. It is your opinion that you are ruined and disgraced.