The pursuit of happiness is real. We all want to be happy, right?
After all, life’s better when we’re happy, healthy, and successful.
So to help you on your journey, please enjoy these feel-good quotes about happiness and being happy to help you find joy and satisfaction in life.
Happiness Quotes
“Happiness is a direction, not a place.” – Sydney J. Harris
“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”
– Ayn Rand“Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.”– Alain De Botton
“The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”– William Morris
“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”
– William Saroyan“People should find happiness in the little things, like family.”– Amanda Bynes
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” – Aristotle
“As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.”– Andrew Delbanco
“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”– Baruch Spinoza
“Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”
– Benjamin Franklin“Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”– Immanuel Kant
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”– Bertrand Russell
“A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.” – Bernard de Fontenelle
“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”
– Buddha“There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human—in not having to be just happy or just sad—in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.”– C. JoyBell C.
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”– Carl Jung
“The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.”
– Carrie Jones“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.” – Charles Spurgeon
“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”– Charlotte Bronte
“If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.”– Chinese Proverb
“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”– Chuck Palahniuk
“Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.”– Cynthia Nelms
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”– Dale Carnegie
“People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat – that’s the only moral they know.”– Dany Laferrière
“We can’t control the world. We can only (barely) control our own reactions to it. Happiness is largely a choice, not a right or entitlement.”– David C. Hill
“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”– Denis Waitley
“I think the key to life is just being a happy person, and happiness will bring you success.” – Diego Val
“Happiness is being content with what you have, living in freedom and liberty, having a good family life and good friends.”
– Divyanka Tripathi“Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.”– Don Marquis
“The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.”– Doug Larson
“Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.”– Douglas Jerrold
“Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.”– E.L. Konigsburg
“Happiness is always the serendipitous result of looking for something else.” – Dr. Idel Dreimer
“Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.”– Earl Nightingale
“If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.”– Edith Wharton
“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”– Epictetus
“The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”– Eric Hoffer
“Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“My family didn’t have a lot of money, and I’m grateful for that. Money is the longest route to happiness.”– Evangeline Lilly
“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”
– Frederick Keonig“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”– Freya Stark
“Happiness is a place between too much and too little.” – Finnish proverb
“Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.”– George Bernard Shaw
“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”– George Burns
“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”– George Sand
“How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and there will never be a time when it is not now.”– Gerald Jampolsky
“Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.”– Gretta Brooker Palmer
“No medicine cures what happiness cannot.” – Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez
“Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world. Don’t go through life creaking.”– H.W. Byles
“Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other. When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack.”– Hazelmarie Elliott
“True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”– Helen Keller
“Happiness is a form of courage.”– Holbrook Jackson
“All happiness depends on courage and work.”
– Honoré de Balzac“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” – Guillaume Apollinaire
“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”– Hunter S. Thompson
“Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.”– Iris Murdoch
“Happiness is distraction from the human tragedy.”– J.M. Reinoso
“Real happiness is not of temporary enjoyment, but is so interwoven with the future that it blesses for ever.”– James Lendall Basford
“Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.” – Hosea Ballou
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”– James Oppenheim
“I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.”– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own.”– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”– John Stuart Mill
“Happiness is where we find it, but very rarely where we seek it.” – J. Petit Senn
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”– Jonathan Safran Foer
“Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”– Joseph Addison
“The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.”– Joseph Roux
“It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”– L.M. Montgomery
“Happiness is only real when shared.” – Jon Krakauer
“If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you.”– Lao Tzu
“You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes.”– Lauren Oliver
“In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness – otherwise how would you know when you’re happy?”– Leslie Caron
“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”– Logan Pearsall Smith
“There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.” – Lady Blessington
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”– Marcel Proust
“He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.”– Marcus Aurelius
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”– Marcus Aurelius
“Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”– Margaret Lee Runbeck
“Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress – the solutions to today’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems, and so on. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.”– Mark Manson
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“In my life I’ve learned that true happiness comes from giving. Helping others along the way makes you evaluate who you are. I think that love is what we’re all searching for. I haven’t come across anyone who didn’t become a better person through love.”– Marla Gibbs
“Happiness is a well-balanced combination of love, labour, and luck.”– Mary Wilson Little
“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.”– Maxim Gorky
“Ups and downs. Victories and defeats. Sadness and happiness. That’s the best kind of life.”– Maxime Lagacé
“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” – Mark Twain
“Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.”– Mignon McLaughlin
“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.”– Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Happiness is the default state. It’s what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing in life.”– Naval Ravikant
“Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.”– Norm Papernick
“Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.” – Orhan Pamuk
“Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other.”– Norman Bradburn
“Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.”– Pat Conroy
“Happiness is the natural flower of duty.”– Phillips Brooks
“It’s the moments that I stopped just to be, rather than do, that have given me true happiness.”– Sir Richard Branson
“Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.” – Mildred Barthel
“Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.”– Robert Anthony
“To be happy, you must fancy that everything you have is a gift, and you the chosen, though you worked your tail off for every bit of it.”– Robert Brault
“Happiness is the experience of loving life. Being happy is being in love with that momentary experience. And love is looking at someone or even something and seeing the absolute best in him/her or it. Love is happiness with what you see. So love and happiness really are the same thing…just expressed differently.”– Robert McPhillips
“Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.”– Robertson Davies
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert A. Heinlein
“Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.”– Roy T. Bennett
“The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment.”– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Sometimes life knocks you on your ass… get up, get up, get up!!! Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.”– Steve Maraboli
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.” – Robert Frost
“The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony.”– V.S. Pritchett
“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”– Victor Hugo
“Happiness is a function of accepting what is.”– Werner Erhard
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”– Aristotle
“There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
“Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.”– Eleanor Roosevelt
“Happiness is a state of activity.”
– Aristotle“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”– Franklin Roosevelt
“Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.”– William Feather
“Happiness is an inside job.” – William Arthur Ward
Quotes about Being Happy
“If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy
“If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.”– Taisen Deshimaru
“We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.”– Thomas Merton
“We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”– Anne Frank
“I have only two kinds of days: happy and hysterically happy.”– Allen J. Lefferdink
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”– Albert Camus
“Whoever is happy will make others happy.” – Anne Frank
“You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”– Epicurus
“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
– Helen Keller“Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.”– Robert Anthony
“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.”– J.D. Salinger
“Happy girls are the prettiest.” – Audrey Hepburn
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”– Abraham Lincoln
“On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.”– William R. Inge
“There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.”– Benjamin Franklin
“If a person’s basic state of mind is serene and calm, then it is possible for this inner peace to overwhelm a painful physical experience. On the other hand, if someone is suffering from depression, anxiety, or any form of emotional distress, then even if he or she happens to be enjoying physical comforts, he will not really be able to experience the happiness that these could bring.”– Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
“Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want.” – Alan Cohen
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”– Albert Schweitzer
“Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.”– Sri Chinmoy
“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.”– Barbara DeAngelis
“Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.”– W.P. Kinsella
“Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.” – Colette
“Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”– Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.”– Tom Brady
“Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.”– St. Augustine
“The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”– Author unknown, commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” – Mark Twain
“Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.”– Robert Louis Stevenson
“You can only have bliss if you don’t chase it.”– Henepola Gunaratana
“If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.”– Edith Wharton
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyam
“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”– Nathaniel Hawthorne
“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.”– Andrew Carnegie
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”– Dalai Lama
“Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.”– Sigmund Freud
“A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour.” – Unknown
“The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.”– George Bernard Shaw
“If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day.”– W. Beran Wolfe
“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.”– Bertrand Russell
“Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.” – Mother Teresa
“When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.”– Niccolo Machiavelli
“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”– George Bernard Shaw
“We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.”– Walter Savage Landor
“Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.”– John Stuart Mill
“Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”– Benjamin Franklin
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”– Mahatma Gandhi
“Happiness is your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.”– Johnny Carson
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”– Carl Jung
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”– Dale Carnegie
“One joy scatters a hundred griefs.” – Chinese Proverb
“Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.”– Jim Rohn
“If you want happiness for an hour – take a nap. If you want happiness for a day – go fishing. If you want happiness for a month – get married. If you want happiness for a year – inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime – help someone else.”– Chinese Proverb
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”– James Oppenheim
“Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.”– Robert S. Lynd
“Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness.” – Buddha
We hope these happiness quotes lifted your mood and brightened your day. Share them with your friends to kepp the good vibes spreading, and let us know if we forgot one you like.
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