Happy quotes
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“A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
A version of this quote was published anonymously in an insurance magazine in 1908 https://books.google.com/books?id=S2JJAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA375&dq=%22others+whenever+they+go%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwja94i3iaXLAhUY7mMKHW5fAGIQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=%22others%20whenever%20they%20go%22&f=false. The earliest attribution to Wilde was in 1955 https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=%22others+whenever+they+go%22+wilde#hl=en&tbs=cdr:1%2Ccd_min:1900%2Ccd_max:1999&tbm=bks&q=%22others+whenever+they+go+oscar+wilde+jive%22; no source in Wilde's writings has been found.
Disputed
As quoted in Sheroes: Bold, Brash, and Absolutely Unabashed Superwomen from Susan B. Anthony to Xena (1998) by Varla Ventura, p. 150
“Life is to be lived, not controlled.”
“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”
"Emotions", p. 36.
The Second Sin (1973)
“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”
“True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.”
Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act III, scene ii
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.”
As quoted in Think, Vol. 27 (1961), p. 32
Disputed
“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”
Source: My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
“Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.”
“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”
The Journey's Echo (1963), p. 161 https://books.google.com/books?id=xlFbAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22There+can+be+no+happiness+if+the+things+we+believe+in+are+different+from+the+things+we+do.%22.
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
Title of poem (1942)
1940s
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
Source: 1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
Often misquoted as: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." or "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
This quote is not found in the various Lincoln sources which can be searched online (e.g. Gutenberg). Niether does Lincoln appear more generally to use the phrase "making up {one's} mind". The saying was first quoted, ascribed to Lincoln but with no source given, in 1914 by Frank Crane and several times subsequently by him in altered versions. It was later quoted in How to Get What You Want (1917) by Orison Swett Marden (Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1917), 74, again without source. Alternative versions quoted are: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" and "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/20/happy-minds/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPeople%20are%20about%20as%20happy,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D&text=Remember%20Lincoln's%20saying%20that%20%E2%80%9Cfolks,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D
Curiously in later books Crane, e.g. Four Minute Essays, 1919, Adventures in Common Sense, 1920, "21", 1930, Crane mentions other routes to happiness and does not again use this quote.
Marden used a great many quotes in his writings, without giving sources. Whilst sources for many of the quotes can be found, this is not true for all. For instance he mentions another story in which Lincoln says "Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on"; this also does not seem to found in Lincoln sources.
Source: Sense and Sensibility
One of the most commonly quoted forms.
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)
Variant: Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
“Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.”
Source: The Anti-Christ
“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”
15 April 1978.
Saturday Review
“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”
A New Earth (2005)
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
“There are no problems, only solutions.”
"Watching the Wheels"
Lyrics, Double Fantasy (1980)
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
Variant: Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
“I get by with a little help from my friends.”
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
As quoted in Weird Ideas That Work : 11 1/2 practices for promoting, managing, and sustaining innovation (2001) by Robert I. Sutton, p. 95
“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”
Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 5: A Crisis in My Mental History (p. 100)
“Happiness is a function of accepting what is.”
[Alan Aldridge, 2007, Religion in the Contemporary World: A Sociological Introduction, Cambridge, England, Polity, 53, 0745634044]
Attributed
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
From Marthe Troly-Curtin's Phrynette Married (1912). Misattributed to Bertrand Russell due to an ambiguous entry in Laurence J. Peter's Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/
Misattributed
“…if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.”
from New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea (1946); as quoted in Style and Idea (1985), p. 124
1940s
“Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.”
Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 350.
Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Context: Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity. He who seeks it elsewhere will not find it for, having drunk from all the glasses of life, he will find satisfaction only in those.
“The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.”
Book II, 2.43
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II
“People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway!”
“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says: «I'm possible!»”
Source: yt
“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.”
“When the world is so complicated, the simple gift of friendship is within all of our hands.”
Variant: 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.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People
“Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.”
Source: The Lords of Discipline
“There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.”
Variant: There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations
Source: Nineteen Minutes
“I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.”
Persuasion (1817)
Works, Persuasion
Source: Pride and Prejudice
Variant: Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and i learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
“It was the kind of kiss that made
me know that I was never so happy in my whole life.”
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”
Source: Invisible Monsters
Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Life and Human Nature.
Afterthoughts (1931)
“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.”
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People
“Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness”
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”
Dale Carnegie, quoted in Permission to Play : Taking Time to Renew Your Smile (2003) by Jill Murphy Long, p. 69
“Life is a journey, not a destination.”
“You can be right or you can be happy.”
Source: Love Is Letting Go of Fear
“Maybe that's what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.”
Letter to Alan Harrington (23 April 1949) published in Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 1 1940-1956 (1996)
Source: Selected Letters, 1940-1956
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).
Variant: Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
Context: "Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."