What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable. —Joseph Addison
A smile. A laugh. What makes someone happy isn’t just the sound of your voice. It’s also knowing that, for a moment, distance means nothing. —AT&T Wireless
Happiness is good health and a bad memory. —Ingrid Bergman
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis. —Margaret Bonanno
Joy, collected over time, fuels resilience—ensuring we’ll have reservoirs of emotional strength when hard things do happen. —Brené Brown
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions . . . the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed. —Dalai Lama
Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold. The feeling of happiness dwells in the soul. —Democritus
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. —Hugh Downs
Do your best every day, and your life will gradually expand into satisfying fullness. —Horatio W. Dresser
To fill the hour . . . that is happiness. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go. —Frederick William Faber
We keep the joys we found in our pocket safe, so we can reach for them whenever we feel empty. —Flavia
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told. —André Gide
Nine keys to contentment:
Health enough to make work a pleasure.
Wealth enough to support your needs.
Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbours.
Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When someone does something well, applaud! You will make two people happy. —Samuel Goldwyn
To love what you do and feel that it matters . . . How could anything be more fun? —Katherine Graham
The essence of pleasure is spontaneity. —Germaine Greer
Life is a miracle, and being aware of simply this can already make us very happy. —Thich Nhat Hanh
Often the greatest enemy of present happiness is past happiness too well remembered. —Oscar Hammling
Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp; but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. —Nathaniel Hawthorne
Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others. —William Hazlitt
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. —Victor Hugo
Happiness comes with the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. —Storm Jameson
We cannot prevent mishaps or tragedies; we can only control how we respond to what happens. When we can let go of feeling it’s very important for things to go as we want them to, we ironically find the peace and happiness we desire. —Kajama
Happiness is independent of outer circumstances—it’s how we interpret and assign meaning to everything that determines how we feel . . . We can make our worlds brighter and more beautiful in an instant by looking for the good and assuming the best. —Kajama
Life rarely goes just as planned, so if we pin our happiness on things working out as we expect them to, we’ll rarely be happy. —Kajama
Sometimes we develop grand concepts of what happiness might look like for us, but if we pay attention, we can see that there are little symbols of happiness in every breath that we take. —His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa
I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times, but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. —Helen Keller
Joy is the best makeup. —Anne Lamott, Grace Eventually: Thoughts on Faith
When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. —Stanislaw Lec
People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be. —Abraham Lincoln
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 are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile. —Earl Nightingale
Happy is he who dares courageously to defend what he loves. —Ovid
Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same. —Francesca Reigler
Rest, rest at the heart’s core . . . till joy shall overtake. —Christina Rossetti
Happiness does not come from doing easy work, but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. —Theodore Isaac Rubin
Happy, not from anything that happens. Warm, not from fire or a hot bath. Light, I register zero on a scale. —Rumi
The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile. —Bertrand Russell
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may, therefore, be demanded back the next hour. —Arthur Schopenhauer
Just being happy helps other souls along. —Ripley D. Saunders
The key to happiness is not to get more, but to enjoy what we have and to fill the empty frame of our lives instead of enlarging it. —Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery, of his passions. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Happiness comes when you believe in what you are doing, know what you are doing, and love what you are doing. —Brian Tracy
We carry the seeds of happiness with us wherever we go. —Martha Washington
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition and not on our circumstances. —Martha Washington
Happiness. Not in another place, but this place. Not for another hour, but this hour. —Walt Whitman
I had looked for happiness in fast living, but it was not there. I tried to find it in money, but it was not there either. But when I placed myself in tune with what I believe to be the fundamental truths of life . . . when I began to develop my limited ability, to rid my mind of all kinds of tangled thoughts, and fill it with zeal and courage and love . . . when I gave myself a chance by treating myself decently and sensibly, I began to feel the stimulating, warm glow of happiness. —Edward Young
What makes us discontent with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others. —Author Unknown
A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour. —Author Unknown