Quotes about happiness

page 6

Justine Moritz in Ch. 8
Frankenstein (1818)

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Source: Meditations

Source: Jacob's Room

Source: A Suitable Boy

Source: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned

Source: The Natural (1952), p. 152

Source: The Waves

Source: Hunted

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Source: Lolita

Source: The Panopticon Writings

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Variant: Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it. Unhappiness covers up your natural state of wellbeing and inner peace, the source of true happiness.
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Source: Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?: 25 Guidelines for Good Communication

Source: The Alchemist

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Source: Metamorphoses

Source: Kingdom of the Wicked

Source: The Communist Manifesto

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Source: Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Diary

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Ravelstein

Source: The Diaries of Adam and Eve

Source: No Longer Human

Source: The Angel's Game

Sec. 1
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Source: The Bhagavad-gita

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Source: Three Comrades

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. (p. 17)

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.

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Source: The Art of Poetry

Variant: The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

Source: A Call to Prayer

Source: The Dark Tower

Attributed to Russell in Prochnow's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132
Disputed

Source: The Last Continent

Source: Between the Lines

Part 2.7 Chapter V. Ways and means of improving the condition of Europe, interspersed with miscellaneous observations
Source: 1790s, Rights of Man, Part 2 (1792)
Context: I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Source: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Song of Achilles

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16

Speech to Wynyard Horticultural Show (1848), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 709.
1840s

Masterful Personality (1923).

Fabio: confessions of the original male supermodel https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jul/15/fabio-confessions-original-male-supermodel (July 15, 2015)

In a letter to her aunt Mary Hill, from Worpswede, June 1899; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 135
1899

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

Latter day attributions
Source: Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, (1884), p. 223.

256b
Phaedrus

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

The Quotable Sir John

Ibid., p. 328
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Não há felicidade senão com conhecimento. Mas o conhecimento da felicidade é infeliz; porque conhecer-se feliz é conhecer-se passando pela felicidade, e tendo, logo já, que deixá-la atrás. Saber é matar, na felicidade como em tudo. Não saber, porém, é não existir.

From interview with David Light

(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely.)</p>
Hiawatha's Photographing
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

No. 15 (March 17, 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Part I, Chapter 1.2, the mysterious stranger's words to Bob Shane
Lightning (1988)

Page 107 (Act 3)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)

Sometimes rendered : "They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."
Both of these are doctored statements that have been widely disseminated as genuine on many anti-semitic websites; They are distortions derived from a statement that was attributed to Washington in Maxims of George Washington about currency speculators during the Revolutionary war, not about Jews: "This tribe of black gentry work more effectually against us, than the enemy's arms. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties, and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society, and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America." More information is available at Snopes. com: "To Bigotry, No Sanction" http://www.snopes.com/quotes/thejews.htm
This quotation is a classic anti-semitic hoax, evidently begun during or just before World War Two by American Nazi sympathizers, and since then has been repeated, for example, in foreign propaganda directed at Americans. In fact it is knitted from two separate letters by Washington, in reverse chronology, neither of them mentioning Jews. The first part of this forgery are taken from Washington's letter to Edmund Pendleton, Nov. 1, 1779 {and the original can be found in the Library of Congress's online service at http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mgw/mgw3h/001/378378.jpg }. I have tried to reproduce Washington's spelling and punctuation exactly. In that letter Washington complains about black marketeers and others undermining the purchasing power of colonial currency:
: … but I am under no apprehension of a capital injury from ay other source than that of the continual depreciation of our Money. This indeed is truly alarming, and of so serious a nature that every other effort is in vain unless something can be done to restore its credit. .... Where this has been the policy (in Connecticut for instance) the prices of every article have fallen and the money consequently is in demand; but in the other States you can scarce get a single thing for it, and yet it is with-held from the public by speculators, while every thing that can be useful to the public is engrossed by this tribe of black gentry, who work more effectually against us that the enemys Arms; and are a hundd. times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in.
The second part of this fabricated quote is from Washington's letter to Joseph Reed, Dec. 12, 1778 {and can be found at the Library of Congress using the same URL but ending in /193192.jpg}, which again condemns war profiteers (the parenthetical list in the quotation is Washington's own words which he put there in parentheses):
: It gives me very sincere pleasure to find that there is likely to be a coalition … so well disposed to second your endeavours in bringing those murderers of our cause (the monopolizers, forestallers, and engrossers) to condign punishment. It is much to be lamented that each State long ere this has not hunted them down as the pests of society, and the greatest Enemys we have to the happiness of America. I would to God that one of the most attrocious of each State was hung in Gibbets upons a gallows five times as high as the one prepared by Haman. No punishment in my opinion is too great for the Man who can build his greatness upon his Country's ruin.
Misattributed, Spurious attributions

Attributed