Quotes About Happiness

Hedonism: The theory that pleasure is the sole value in life, so go for it. Likewise, pain makes life less pleasant, so do whatever is necessary to avoid it. In short, if it feels good, it is good. There are many philosophical variations of Hedonism, all of them a pleasure to think about.

Through the ages, an impressive number of philosophers—from hedonists to transcendentalists—have rated friendship as life's greatest pleasure.

According to many psychologists, the happier people get, the better are their friendships, marriages, work performance, health, and income. In short, no pain, more gain.

If all you seek from something is pleasure, you'll never find it. All you will feel is noia [existential boredom], often disgust. To feel pleasure in any act or activity, you have to pursue some end other than pleasure.

Utilitarianism: A moral and political philosophy that proposes the doctrine of the greatest good/happiness for the greatest number of people. According to one of Utilitarianism's chief architects, Jeremy Bentham, the basic idea is to find a balance between the individual's happiness and the happiness of the community, "each counting in an equal way." In positing happiness as its aim, Utilitarianism is a type of hedonism.

Utilitarianism is a type of hedonism.

Companionship was at the top of Epicurus's list of life's pleasures. He wrote, 'Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy." You have to love those words "very miserable"; Schopenhauer could not be content with simply saying "unhappy" as Epicurus did.

Live life in the present. This moment is the only thing that's real. Worrying about the future and lamenting the past only crowds out the beauty of what is happening now.

Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they already have.

So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy's needs but not their own? Like so many thinkers, Smith believed that people want just one thing—happiness—hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy.14 If and only if people hold this false belief will they do enough producing, procuring, and consuming to sustain their economies.

The fact is that human beings come into the world with a passion for control, they go out of the world the same way, and research suggests that if they lose their ability to control things at any point between their entrance and their exit, they become unhappy, helpless, hopeless, and depressed.40 And occasionally dead.

We expect the next car, the next house or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn't

But the agricultural, industrial, and technological revolutions changed all that, and the resulting explosion of personal liberty has created a bewildering array of options, alternatives, choices, and decisions that our ancestors never faced. For the very first time, our happiness is in our hands.

the fundamental needs of a vibrant economy and the fundamental needs of a happy individual are not necessarily the same.

People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be means to that end.

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.

Beyond the satiation level of income, you can buy more pleasurable experiences, but you will lose some of your ability to enjoy the less expensive ones.

what we objectively get (wealth) is not the same as what we subjectively experience when we get it (utility).

We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather

The quest for this simple bliss, free from dogmas and religious beliefs, from submission to a priesthood, and from the hope of being sanctified by others, is the object of each person's search.

Giardinaggio, prole (i bambini di Marianne e i nostri figli adolescenti), fricassee di funghi, musica, non si finirebbe mai di elencare le piccole gioie che alimentano l'istinto di vivere.

Abbioccarmi in treno, al cinema, a teatro o mentre leggo è una voluttà cui non rinuncio mai.

Era uno di quei momenti in cui, malgrado i nostri tormenti interiori, siamo segretamente contenti di non essere l'altro. Così si sferruzzano i lutti. Piccoli istanti di gioia tra gli assalti della disperazione, un diritto e un rovescio, fino alla felicità ritrovata di essere se stessi… Sì, deve essere questa, dopo tutto, la felicità: la soddisfazione di non essere l'altro.