Quotes About Happiness

the life of average people, we find the other side of the glittering coin of gregariousness: the most painful events are also those that involve relationships. Unfair bosses and rude customers make us unhappy on the job. At home an uncaring spouse, an ungrateful child, and interfering in-laws are the prime sources of the blues. How is it possible to reconcile the fact that people cause both the best and the worst times?

Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Sleep, rest, food, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that return consciousness to order after the needs of the body intrude and cause psychic entropy to occur. But they do not produce psychological growth. They do not add complexity to the self. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create new order in consciousness.

If goals are well chosen, and if we have the courage to abide by them despite opposition, we shall be so focused on the actions and events around us that we won't have the time to be unhappy.

One of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is this great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment.

Bertrand Russell, uno de los más grandes filósofos de nuestro siglo, describe cómo logró la felicidad personal: «gradualmente aprendí a ser indiferente a mi yo y mis deficiencias; centré mi atención cada vez más sobre los objetos externos: el estado del mundo, las diversas ramas del conocimiento, los individuos hacia quienes sentía afecto».

As many a thinker since Aristotle has said, everything we do is ultimately aimed at experiencing happiness. We don't really want wealth, or health, or fame as such-we want these things because we hope that they will make us happy. But happiness we seek not because it will get us something else, but for its own sake.

If Diogenes with his lantern twenty-three centuries ago had difficulty finding an honest man, today he would have perhaps an even more troublesome time finding a happy one.

while personal income in the U.S. more than doubled between i 96o and the 19gos in constant dollars, the proportion of people saying they are very happy remained a steady 30 percent. One conclusion that the findings seem to justify is that beyond the threshold of poverty, additional resources do not appreciably improve the chances of being happy.

while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.

La tarea consiste en aprender a disfrutar de la vida cotidiana sin disminuir las oportunidades de las demás personas para que disfruten con las suyas.

Being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy. Feeling a breeze on a hot day, seeing a cloud reflected on the glass facade of a high-rise, working on a business deal, watching a child play with a puppy, drinking a glass of water can all be felt as deeply satisfying experiences that enrich one's life.

Being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy.

it seems clear that if you are an extrovert, have strong self-esteem, and look at the world with optimism, you will have a better chance of becoming successful and leading a satisfying life.

But as soon as these basic problems of survival are solved, merely having enough food and a comfortable shelter is no longer sufficient to make people content. New needs are felt, new desires arise. With affluence and power come escalating expectations, and as our level of wealth and comforts keeps increasing, the sense of well-being we hoped to achieve keeps receding into the distance.

If one does not expect perfect safety, recognizes that risks are inevitable, and succeeds in enjoying a less than ideally predictable world, the threat of insecurity will not have as great a chance of marring happiness.

If I set as my goal to remain alive while sitting on the living-room sofa, I also could spend days knowing that I was achieving it, just as the rock climber does. But this realization would not make me particularly happy, whereas the climber's knowledge brings exhilaration to his dangerous ascent.

Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy. Yet we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it.

What I "discovered" was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on

People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives

Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of our century, described how he achieved personal happiness: "Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection." There could be no better short description of how to build for oneself an autotelic personality.

The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind. It is almost immeasurably huge, and most of it is hostilely empty and cold.

Ask yourself whether you are happy," said J. S. Mill, "and you cease to be so.

Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life either rich or miserable.