Quotes about happiness
page 7

“I feel healthy! I feel happy I feel terrific”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Daily mantra for positive self-suggestion which he recommended in Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude (1960) and his teachings.

Feeling

“I do not like the idea of happiness — it is too momentary — I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In notes to Anita Pollitzer, Abiquiu, New Mexico, (after February, 1968); as quoted in The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O’Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer, ed. Clive Giboire, Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 1990, p. 324
1960s

Idea, Business

“Movies are much more fascist than books. They tell you what to feel, when to feel it. Popular movies manipulate you. Music tells you when it's a sad part and when it's a happy part. You're obliged to watch them at the speed the filmmaker has created for you. That, I think, is one of the reasons why they're so popular - because you don't have to think very hard. The filmmaker has done all the thinking for you.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

"Clive Barker: Love, Death, & the Whole Damned Thing", Locus (1995)

Books, Sadness, Music, Feeling

“The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lectures on Russian Literature

Lectures on Russian Literature (1982)

“HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.”

Christopher McCandless (1968–1992) American hiker and explorer

Written on a page in his copy of Doctor Zhivago He is attributed to have commented on this Doctor Zhivago passage: "And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness..." (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, Pan Macmillan, 2011 p. 188; see also http://www.christophermccandless.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5479) Disputed

“Oh, happy kings,
Whose thrones are raised in their subjects' hearts.”

John Ford (dramatist) Perkin Warbeck

Perkin Warbeck, Act III, sc. i. (c. 1629-34)

Heart

“The joy, the tension, the exhilaration and the happiness those Sundays brought into our lives served as a cushion, I am sure, for the sterner life which was ahead for all of us.”

Learie Constantine (1901–1971) West Indian cricketer, lawyer, politician and diplomat

The Changing Face of Cricket (1969)

Life, Joy

“Sometimes you're just happy playing. Some people, some media, unfortunately, don't understand that it's okay just to play tennis and enjoy it. They always think you have to win everything, it always needs to be a success story, and if it's not, obviously, what is the point? Maybe you have to go back and think, Why have I started playing tennis? Because I just like it. It's actually sort of a dream hobby that became somewhat of a job. Some people just don't get that, ever.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

Tennis - ATP World Tour - Shanghai 2012 Thursday - Federer Recalls First Time At No. 1 http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2012/10/41/Shanghai-Thursday-Federer-Recalls-Rise-To-Top.aspx

People, Dreams, Understanding, Thinking

“Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

La foi est la consolation des misérables et la terreur des heureux.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 184.

Faith

“All around the circle, feeding on the green, green grass were fat and happy horses…”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

Grass, Horse

“Thinking more of others’ happiness than of her own was very fine; but did it not mean giving up her very individuality, quenching all the warm love, the true desires, that made her herself? Yet in this deadness lay her only comfort; so it seemed.”

Elizabeth Gaskell book Wives and Daughters

Wives and Daughters, ch. 11
Wives and Daughters

Love, Thinking, Dead

“If you want to feel the happiness of loving, forget about your soul.
The soul ruins love.
Only in God can the soul meet satisfaction.
Not in another soul.
Only in God — or out of the world.
Souls cannot communicate.
Let your body talk to another body.
Because bodies understand each other, but souls don’t.”

Manuel Bandeira (1886–1968) Brazilian writer

Se queres sentir a felicidade de amar, esquece a tua alma.
A alma é que estraga o amor.
Só em Deus ela pode encontrar satisfação.
Não noutra alma.
Só em Deus - ou fora do mundo.
As almas são incomunicáveis.
Deixa o teu corpo entender — se com outro corpo.
Porque os corpos se entendem, mas as almas não.
Arte de amar (The Art of Loving)

Love, God, World, Feeling

“The effort to develop the economy and improve the people’s standard of living can be successful only when it is backed by powerful military capabilities, nuclear forces. In the spirit with which we conquered outer space and with the mettle with which we succeeded in the nuclear test of a high level, we must push ahead simultaneously with the campaign to defend the country and the construction of an economic giant, and thus achieve the happiness of the people and the prosperity of the powerful Paektusan nation without fail.”

Kim Jong-un (1984) 3rd Supreme Leader of North Korea

Report to the March 2013 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, announcing the byungjin (dual advancement) policy line

People, Effort, Success, Country

“[W]orking men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the most numerous, and as you added that those were the sentiments of the gentlemen present, representing not only the working class, but citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic, I am happy to concur with you in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Commercial version

Men, Country

“Those who thank God much are the truly wealthy. So our inner happiness depends not on what we experience but on the degree of our gratitude to God, whatever the experience.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Reverence for Life (1969)

God, Dependency, Gratitude

“Whether I’m in front of the camera, behind the camera, at my computer writing a novel or a screenplay, as long as I get to entertain someone out there, I’m happy.”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Interview Quotes, Random Quotes

“Totally inspires me and I am really happy that there are so many people who are working for children’s right and I’m not alone. And he totally deserved this award. So I am feeling honored that I’m sharing this award with him. He recieved this award and we both are the two Nobel award receivers, one is from Pakistan, one is from India, one believes in Hinduism, one strongly believes in Islam. And it gives a message to people – it gives a message to people of love between Pakistan and India and between – between different religions and we both support each other.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Speech (October 10, 2014)

Love, Children, People, Religion

“The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech of 1877-06-24
1870s

People, Health, Dependency

“There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

For Wife, Love, Death, People

“Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. … humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26

“There are three forces on the side of life which require no exceptional mental endowment, which are not very rare at present, and might be very common under better social institutions. They are love, the instinct of constructiveness, and the joy of life. All three are checked and enfeebled at present by the conditions under which men live—not only the less outwardly fortunate, but also the majority of the well-to-do. Our institutions rest upon injustice and authority: it is only by closing our hearts against sympathy and our minds against truth that we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses by which we profit. The conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless weariness. Our economic system compels almost all men to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own, making them feel impotent in action and only able to secure a certain modicum of passive pleasure. All these things destroy the vigor of the community, the expansive affections of individuals, and the power of viewing the world generously. All these things are unnecessary and can be ended by wisdom and courage. If they were ended, the impulsive life of men would become wholly different, and the human race might travel towards a new happiness and a new vigor.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 18-19

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“Never mind… Don't cry… I will catch him again… [Stepping to the front of the stage and addressing the audience. ] If any of you should find him, would you be so very kind as to give him back to us?… We need him for our happiness, later on…”

Maurice Maeterlinck The Blue Bird

Tyltyl
The Blue Bird (1908)

Cry

“Those locks of jet are turned to gray,
And she is strange and far away
That might have been mine own to-day —

That might have been mine own, my dear,
Through many and many a happy year —
That might have sat beside me here.”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

Faces in the Fire (1860), st. 8 & 9
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

“Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.”

Dick Francis (1920–2010) English jockey and crime writer

Reflex

People, World, Faith, Way

“As all regions below are replenished with living creatures… so may the heavens above be replenished with beings whose nature we do not understand. He that shall well consider the strange and wonderful nature of life and the frame of the Animals, will think nothing beyond the possibility of nature, nothing too hard for the omnipotent power of God. And as the Planets remain in their orbs, so may any other bodies subsist at any distance from the earth, and much more may beings, who have sufficient power of self motion, move whether they will, and continue in any regions of the heavens whatever, there to enjoy the society of one another, and by their messengers or Angels to rule the earth and convers with the remotest regions. Thus may the whole heavens or any part thereof whatever be the habitation of the Blessed, and at the same time the earth be subject to their dominion. And to have thus the liberty and dominion of the whole heavens and the choice of the happiest places for abode seems a greater happiness than to be confined to any one place whatever.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

As quoted by Frank Edward Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (1977)

Life, God, Angels, Understanding

“Beauty is but the cloak of happiness. Where joy tarries, there also is beauty.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Source: Rhythmen und Runen (1944), p. 468

Beauty, Joy

“An illusion which makes me happy is worth a verity which drags me to the ground.”

Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) German writer, poet and publisher

Ein Wahn, der mich beglückt,
Ist eine Wahrheit werth, die mich zu Boden drückt.
Idris, ein heroisch-comisches Gedicht, Song 3, line 79 (1768); translation from Harry T. Reis and Caryl E. Rusbult (eds.) Close Relationships (New York: Psychology Press, 2004) p. 321.

“Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

§ 2.1, cited in Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (1987), p. ix
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Animals

“Your success and happiness depend on your willingness to help others solve their problems.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the secret of success - "TB Joshua Sends Pastor Chris Member To School" https://archive.is/20130628101340/www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/3995918-tb-joshua-sends-pastor-chris-member-to-school All Voices (August 25 2009)

Problem, Success, Help, Dependency

“This is ex-Beatle, John Lennon. I've been wanting to write you, but I guess I didn't really want to face reality. I never do this, this is why I take drugs. Reality frightens me and paranoids me. True, I have a lot of money… but basically, I'm afraid to face the problems of life. Let me begin to say, I regret that I said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. I don't even like myself anymore — guilt. My Cousin, Marilyn McCabe has tried to help me. She told me you were praying for me. … I want happiness. I don't want to keep up with drugs… Explain to me what Christianity can do for me. Is it phoney? Can He love me? I want out of Hell.
I am, I hate to say, under the influence of pills now. I can't stop. I only wish I could thank you for caring.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Letter to Oral Roberts in 1972, as quoted in Oral Roberts : An American Life‎ (1985) by David Edwin Harrell, p. 310; later published in How to be a Successful Teenager (1994) by Rick Jones, Ch. 5 : The Secret About Material Things, p. 54; the accuracy of this is disputed in "The Gospel of John Lennon" in This Land Press (7 March 2011) http://thislandpress.com/03/07/2011/the-gospel-of-john-lennon/ Disputed

Love, Life, Money, Hate

“Everything was lost except happiness.”

Jacques Prevért (1900–1977) French poet, screenwriter

Attributed

“When humanity will reach its goal, regarding the success of the bodies, namely they will reach the perfect level of love for one another, then all the bodies will unite to one body and one heart, and only then all the hoped for happiness at its highest peak, will be revealed to humanity.”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Assorted Themes, On Love for the Fellow Man

Love, Hope, Success, Heart

“Her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 45 (last lines)

Pain, Youth, Sense, Strong

“People always called The Cure gloomy, but listening to The Cure made me happy. There was something about the gloominess that gave me comfort, and I think we're the same way.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

Corgan, William. Interview. Playboy. (Month?), 1997.

People, Way, Thinking

“In dependence, there is no happiness, even in a dream.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics" which principle Mahatma Gandhi adopted to give a national leadership motto, in P.7

Dreams, Dependency

“(On Ainsley Harriott) I must admit, I tend to think - with Ainsley - if you're that happy, you haven't really understood the world. You see, I think that cheeriness is all very well. Beyond a certain point it becomes quite offensive. And how many versions of what is, basically, your dinner can Ainsley do? There must be executives stalking the corridors of White City, thinking 'We need a new idea for Ainsley. He's so jolly. What can we have? We've had him doing Can't Cook, Won't Cook, Ready Steady Cook, Barbecues. We need something new, different, edgy. How about this? We like this. Ainsley's Death-Row Dinners.' Yes, the jolly chef tours the condemned man with a last supper to remember. We can have the recipes in the Radio Times - Ainsley's Humanely Fried Chicken, with a lethal injection of butter!”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

guaranteed to make the governor say 'Pardon'. (Wrap Up Warm tour, May 2004)
Stand-up

Death, World, Idea, Thinking

“The taste for freedom, the fashion and cult of happiness of the majority that the nineteenth century is infatuated with, was only a heresy in his eyes that would pass like others.”

Stendhal book The Charterhouse of Parma

Le goût de la liberté, la mode et le culte du bonheur du plus grand nombre, dont le XIXe siècle s'est entiché, n'étaient à ses yeux qu'une hérésie qui passera comme les autres.
Source: La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Ch. 7

Fashion, Freedom

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 5: A Crisis in My Mental History (p. 100)

Happy

“I love tea. Mmmm. I know I'm getting old because I'm startin' get excited about tea. Just sitting in the loungeroom bored ya no. Somebody goes "You want a cup of tea?" and I go "Oar he hor." Start feeling a little bit depressed when it gets to the bottom, I think to myself I'll just make myself another cup, I can feel happy again.”

Carl Barron (1964) Australian comedian

Carl Barron Live (2003)

Love, Feeling, Thinking, Tea

“120. Happy is the spirit that attains to complete unconsciousness of all sensible experience at the time of prayer.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

Chapters on Prayer

Time

“I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

(2005) The Guardian article http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/14/japan.awardsandprizes

Children, World, Feeling, Soul

“A woman is of greater service to our life if she is in it, instead of being an element of happiness, an instrument of sorrow, and there is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Une femme est d'une plus grande utilité pour notre vie si elle y est, au lieu d'un élément de bonheur, un instrument de chagrin, et il n'y en a pas une seule dont la possession soit aussi précieuse que celle des vérités qu'elle nous découvre en nous faisant souffrir.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925), Ch. I: "Grief and Oblivion"

Life, Truth, World, Suffering

“As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

Children, Youth, World, Way

“Joy, thou spark from Heav'n immortal,
Daughter of Elysium!
Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing
Goddess, to thy shrine we come.
Thy sweet magic brings together
What stern Custom spreads afar;
All men become brothers
Where thy happy wing-beats are.”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 1
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

Men, Joy, Daughters

“We are not teaching some ritualistic process, that "You become Hindu. You become Christian. You become Muhammadan." We are simply teaching, "You try to love God. You have forgotten God. You have declared, 'God is dead.' These are all nonsense. God is there. You are here. You are suffering because you have forgotten God. You try to love God. Your normal life will come back. You will be happy."”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

This is Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā 4.7-10 - Los Angeles, (6 January 1969) Vanipedia http://vaniquotes.org/wiki/You_have_forgotten_God._You_have_declared,_%27God_is_dead.%27_These_are_all_nonsense._God_is_there._You_are_here._You_are_suffering_because_you_have_forgotten_God._You_try_to_love_God._Your_normal_life_will_come_back._You_will_be_happy._This_is_KC_movement Quotes from other Sources

Love, Life, God, Suffering

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Source: Jailbird (1979), p. 14

Peaceful, Peace, Fools, Way

“If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies,
And they are fools who roam.
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.”

Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788) British writer

The Fireside, stanza 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World, Fools, Home, Joy

“When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.And once again I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir.Et dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du morceau de madeleine trempé dans le tilleul que me donnait ma tante (quoique je ne susse pas encore et dusse remettre à bien plus tard de découvrir pourquoi ce souvenir me rendait si heureux), aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre.
"Overture"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

People, Faith, Hope, Soul

“Happiness is to have a little string onto which things will attach themselves.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Monday 20 April 1925
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

“One is never free except in relation to someone else. And when, the relation is based on happiness, it allows the greatest freedom in the world.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide (1969, Sunlight on Cold Water, translated 1971)

World, Freedom

“Whoever has looked into the eyes of Jesus as he appears to us in his words knows that true happiness consists of service to this great One and his Spirit — and a life offerred to his work. Those who accept this mode of life, who know how to live it, become brothers and sisters.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Reverence for Life (1969)

Life, Sister, Appearance

“The compassionate heart of his majesty finds no pleasure in cruelties or in causing sorrow to others; he is ever sparing of the lives of his subjects, wishing to bestow happiness upon all.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

About Akbar. Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Pleasure, Heart

“Happy the man, of mortals happiest he,
Whose quiet mind from vain desires is free;
Whom neither hopes deceive, nor fears torment,
But lives at peace, within himself content;
In thought, or act, accountable to none
But to himself, and to the gods alone.”

George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne (1666–1735) 1st Baron Lansdowne

Epistle to Mrs. Higgons (1690), line 79; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), "Contentment", p. 133-36.

God, Fear, Peace, Hope

“Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 188.

“Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Again and again their will-to-live becomes, as it were, intoxicated: spring sunshine, opening flowers, moving clouds, waving fields of grain — all affect it. The manifold will-to-live, which is known to us in the splendid phenomena in which it clothes itself, grasps at their personal wills. They would fain join their shouts to the mighty symphony which is proceeding all around them. The world seem beauteous…but the intoxication passes. Dreadful discords only allow them to hear a confused noise, as before, where they had thought to catch the strains of glorious music. The beauty of nature is obscured by the suffering which they discover in every direction. And now they see again that they are driven about like shipwrecked persons on the waste of ocean, only that the boat is at one moment lifted high on the crest of the waves and a moment later sinks deep into the trough; and that now sunshine and now darkening clouds lie on the surface of the water.
And now they would fain persuade themselves that land lies on the horizon toward which they are driven. Their will-to-live befools their intellect so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like to see it. It forces this intellect to show them a map which lends support to their hope of land. Once again they essay to reach the shore, until finally their arms sink exhausted for the last time and their eyes rove desperately from wave to wave. …
Thus it is with the will-to-live when it is unreflective.
But is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we either drift aimlessly through lack of reflection or sink in pessimism as the result of reflection? No. We must indeed attempt the limitless ocean, but we may set our sails and steer a determined course.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

Life, Men, Lie, World

“If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.”

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) Anglo-American poet

To my Dear and Loving Husband.

Love, Women

“A desire for children, I suppose; for Nessa's life; for the sense of flowers breaking all round me involuntarily. […] Years and years ago, after the Lytton affair, I said to myself, walking up the hill at Bayreuth, never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having; good advice I think. And then I went on to say to myself that one must like things for themselves; or rather, rid them of their bearing upon one's personal life. One must venture on to the things that exist independently of oneself. Now this is very hard for young women to do. Yet I got satisfaction from it. And now, married to L., I never have to make the effort. Perhaps I have been to happy for my soul's good? And does some of my discontent come from feeling that?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

2 January 1923
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Women, Children, Feeling

“Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure; …”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

I.213
Human, All Too Human (1878)

Pleasure, Imagination

“What for is marriage? It is to unite a man and a woman to enjoy a natural life with happiness. It is to find solace after hard work. Most of the people do not realize that marriages are for sharing pleasures of the wedded life.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

citation needed
Marriage

Life, Marriage, People, Pleasure

“I have to be honest with you. Comedy is what I want to see at the movies these days. Life is frickin' hard, man. I want to go to the movies and see people happy and enjoying themselves and having some fun. I've made other kinds of movies, for sure. But it's pretty apparent to me that's what people want. That's what I want. I enjoy those kinds of movies.”

Reese Witherspoon (1976) American film actress and producer

Interview for Vogue magazine, November 2008.

Life, People

“The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them so, you have wronged them. No other good they may get can make up for that.”

Charles Buxton (1823–1871) English brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician

Source: Notes of Thought (1883), p. 147

Children

“Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 179
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)

Love, Time

“In misfortune we usually regain the peace that we were robbed of through fear of that very misfortune.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Im Unglück finden wir meistens die Ruhe wieder, die uns durch die Furcht vor dem Unglück geraubt wurde.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 66.

Fear, Peace

“Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts

Truth, World, Dreams, Imagination

“If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor — poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living.”

Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer

Herbert N. Casson cited in: Forbes magazine (1950) The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life. p. 302
1950s and later

Life, Money

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

"Knowing What's Nice", an essay from In These Times (2003)
Various interviews

Thinking

“Out of infinite longings rise
finite deeds like weak fountains,
falling back just in time and trembling.
And yet, what otherwise remains silent,
our happy energies—show themselves
in these dancing tears.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book The Book of Images

Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen
endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen,
die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen.
Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen,
unsere fröhlichen Kräfte—zeigen
sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.
Initiale (Initial) (as translated by Cliff Crego)
Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (1902)

Tear, Time, Dance

“I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Letter to Sheikh El-Messiri, (28 August 1798); published in Correspondance Napoleon edited by Henri Plon (1861), Vol.4, No. 3148, p. 420

Men, Education, Hope, Time

“The new readers have mentality, fashions, feelings completely different from those of previous readers. Should I draw comics following my first readers in their growth? Or should I stop doing the cartoonist? … More or less every three years a cartoonist for children is cornered. I, too, every three years, living a crisis. So I decide and I get back to work for my new readers as if they were the first. … This is why I am certain that the good work that will draw able to make happy readers of all time.”

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

From My Diary manga , 1966; quoted in AA.VV., Osamu Tezuka: A Manga Biography , vol. 3, translated by Marta Fogato, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2001, p. 26. ISBN 8888063102

Children, Feeling, Fashion, Time

“An unlucky rich man is more capable of satisfying his desires and of riding out disaster when it strikes, but a lucky man is better off than him…He is the one who deserves to be described as happy. But until he is dead, you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Herodotus (trans. Robin Waterfield) The Histories Bk. 1, ch. 32, pp. 15-16.

Dead

“It is just as ridiculous to get excited & hysterical over a coming cultural change as to get excited & hysterical over one's physical aging... There is legitimate pathos about both processes; but blame & rebellion are essentially cheap, because inappropriate, emotions... It is wholly appropriate to feel a deep sadness at the coming of unknown things & the departure of those around which all our symbolic associations are entwined. All life is fundamentally & inextricably sad, with the perpetual snatching away of all the chance combinations of image & vista & mood that we become attached to, & the perpetual encroachment of the shadow of decay upon illusions of expansion & liberation which buoyed us up & spurred us on in youth. That is why I consider all jauntiness, & many forms of carelessly generalised humour, as essentially cheap & mocking, & occasionally ghastly & corpselike. Jauntiness & non-ironic humour in this world of basic & inescapable sadness are like the hysterical dances that a madman might execute on the grave of all his hopes. But if, at one extreme, intellectual poses of spurious happiness be cheap & disgusting; so at the other extreme are all gestures & fist-clenchings of rebellion equally silly & inappropriate—if not quite so overtly repulsive. All these things are ridiculous & contemptible because they are not legitimately applicable... The sole sensible way to face the cosmos & its essential sadness (an adumbration of true tragedy which no destruction of values can touch) is with manly resignation—eyes open to the real facts of perpetual frustration, & mind & sense alert to catch what little pleasure there is to be caught during one's brief instant of existence. Once we know, as a matter of course, how nature inescapably sets our freedom-adventure-expansion desires, & our symbol-&-experience-affections, definitely beyond all zones of possible fulfilment, we are in a sense fortified in advance, & able to endure the ordeal of consciousness with considerable equanimity... Life, if well filled with distracting images & activities favourable to the ego's sense of expansion, freedom, & adventurous expectancy, can be very far from gloomy—& the best way to achieve this condition is to get rid of the unnatural conceptions which make conscious evils out of impersonal and inevitable limitations... get rid of these, & of those false & unattainable standards which breed misery & mockery through their beckoning emptiness.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 291
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Life, Pleasure, Youth, Age

“The happy-go-lucky barefoot kid who loved rugby, ice-cream-and-hot-chocolate sauce, staying at home for a braai and the flieks grew up into an international rubgy player, idol of millions and South African cult figure…”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Description of Naas Botha from her interview with Botha published in the Just Jani column of the Sunday Times, republished in Face Value by Jani Allan.
Sunday Times

Love, Home

“I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom. I mark only the happy hours, like the sundial, because otherwise I would have gone nuts. To quote from my script for The Dreamers, never expect justice in the world. That is not part of God's plan. Everybody thinks that if they don't get it, they're some kind of odd man out. And it's not true. Nobody gets justice — people get good luck or bad luck.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Quoted by Barbara Leaming, "Orson Welles: The Unfulfilled Promise". The New York Times, July 14, 1985.

God, Bad luck, People, World

“O God! methinks, it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run:
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.”

William Shakespeare Henry VI (play) Part 1-3

King Henry, Act II, scene v.
Henry VI, Part 3 (1592)

Life, God, Home

“My darling girl, Unfortunately, this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh. All the same, or precisely for this reason, it is happiness and comfort for us men to have a precious sweetheart - and I have the most precious, the dearest and best of all!”

Martin Bormann (1900–1945) Nazi leader and private secretary to Adolf Hitler

Quoted in "The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations" - Page 873 - by Robert Andrews - Reference - 1993.

Life, Men, Girl, Nature

“Five decades ago today, Americans came to this honored place to lay claim to a promise made at our founding: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise -- those truths -- remained unmet. And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Life, Women, Men, War

“Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.”

Siegbert Tarrasch book The Game of Chess

The Game of Chess (1931), Preface

Love, Men, Music

“I am glad to learn that the Parliament Bill has been passed for the Darlington Railway. I am much obliged by the favourable sentiments you express towards me, and shall be happy if I can be of service in carrying into execution your plans.”

George Stephenson (1781–1848) English civil engineer and mechanical engineer

Letter to Edward Pease (1821-04-28)

Learning

“Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonising preoccupation with self.”

Iris Murdoch book The Nice and the Good

The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 22.

Business

“Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

Seulement, il faut du temps pour être heureux. Beaucoup de temps. Le bonheur lui aussi est une longue patience.
A Happy Death (1971)

Time, Patience

“Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer thut das
Maxims and Arrows, 12
Twilight of the Idols (1888)

“Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

69
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Perfection

“In love, happiness is an abnormal state.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

[Le bonheur] est, dans l'amour, un état anormal.
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)

Love

“The wretched and the miserable would rise to plenty of joy and happiness.”

Sai Baba of Shirdi (1836–1918) Hindu and muslim saint

Eleven important sayings

Joy

“It is possible for every man to go deep within and saturate his conscious mind with inner happiness with that unlimited intelligence that dwells at the source of thought.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Quoted from: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - Lake Louise, Canada (1968) - MaharishiUniversity http://www.bienfaits-meditation.com/en/maharishi/videos/mechanics-of-the-technique

Intelligence

“He is wealthy enough, that wanteth not: he is great enough, that is his own master: he is happy enough, that lives to die well.”

Joseph Hall (1574–1656) British bishop

Three Centuries of Meditations and Vowes century III, LIX.

“It is a great mitzvah to be happy always.”

Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) Ukrainian rabbi

Attributed

“For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 7: The Case for Socialism

Justice, Revenge, Sense, Parting

“Who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate?”
Quis est enim tam compositae felicitatis ut non aliqua ex parte cum status sui qualitate rixetur?

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Prose IV, line 12
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book II

Parting

“Visions are a feeble resource, you will say, against great adversity! Oh Sir, these visions may possibly have more reality than all those apparent goods about which men make so much ado, for they never bring a true feeling of happiness to the soul, and those who possess them are equally forced to project themselves into the future for want of finding enjoyments that satisfy them, in the present.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)
Source: Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters

Men, Feeling, Soul, Reality

“Drugs provide pleasure; they cannot provide happiness. For happiness, you need people.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 88

People, Pleasure

“I saw ahead the rainbow flaming above the tepee of the Six Grandfathers, built and roofed with cloud and sewed with thongs of lightning; and underneath it were all the wings of the air and under them the animals and men. All these were rejoicing, and thunder was like happy laughter.
As I rode in through the rainbow door, there were cheering voices from all over the universe, and I saw the Six Grandfathers sitting in a row, with their arms held toward me and their hands, palms out; and behind them in the cloud were faces thronging, without number, of the people yet to be.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

Men, People, Laughter, Universe

“I wish one and all long and happy lives, no matter what may become of them afterwards. Use sunscreen! Don’t smoke cigarettes. Cigars, however, are good for you … Firearms are also good for you … Gunpowder has zero fat and zero cholesterol. That goes for dumdums, too.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

“It is our will that this state shall endure for a thousand years. We are happy to know that the future is ours entirely!”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

1930s, From the film Triumph of the Will (1935)

Future

“Somewhere there's a happy harbor
far from the storm.
Out where the sun shines there is someone
I'm meant to adore,
and I know the day I find her,
I'll smile once more.”

Burt Bacharach (1928) American pianist, composer and music producer

Song Nikki

Smile, Sun

“What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising crap. The Actors Studio in America is supposed to be the worst. There the students learn how to be natural - that is, they flop around, pick their noses, scratch their balls. This bullshit is known as "method acting." How can you "teach" someone to be an actor? How can you teach someone how and what to feel and how to express it? How can someone teach me how to laugh or cry? How to be glad and how to be sad? What pain is, or despair or happiness? What poverty and hunger are? What hate and love are? What desire is, and fulfillment? No, I don't want to waste my time with these arrogant morons.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 59

Love, Hunger, Pain, Hate

“As when you were a child and some tremendous hurt
Was pulled over your head like a sack-
Glints of sunshine through the mesh
And the hum of the cherry trees.

But it doesn’t help, the great hurt
Covers head and torso and knees
And though you are able to move sometimes
Spring brings no happiness.

Yes, shimmering wool cap, pull it down over your face
Stare through the mesh.
Out on the bay, the rings of water multiply soundlessly
Green leaves darken the earth.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

As When You Were a Child.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996

Tree, Spring, Water, Help

“But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

Men, World, Nature

“At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: "Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it." My advice is: "Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy."”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Dan denk ik niet aan al de ellende, maar aan het mooie dat nog overblijft. Hierin ligt voor een groot deel het verschil tussen moeder en mij. Haar raad voor zwaarmoedigheid is: "Denk aan al de ellende in de wereld en wees blij, dat jij die niet beleeft!"
Mijn raad is: "Ga naar buiten, naar de velden, de natuur en de zon, ga naar buiten en probeer het geluk in jezelf te hervinden en in God. Denk aan al het mooie dat er in en om jezelf nog overblijft en wees gelukkig!"
7 March 1944
Variant translations:
:Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
Think of all the beauty that is still left in and around you and be happy!
(1942 - 1944)

World, Beauty, Nature, Thinking

“Greek tragedy met her death in a different way from all the older sister arts: she died tragically by her own hand, after irresolvable conflicts, while the others died happy and peaceful at an advanced age. If a painless death, leaving behind beautiful progeny, is the sign of a happy natural state, then the endings of the other arts show us the example of just such a happy natural state: they sink slowly, and with their dying eyes they behold their fairer offspring, who lift up their heads in bold impatience. The death of Greek tragedy, on the other hand, left a great void whose effects were felt profoundly, far and wide; as once Greek sailors in Tiberius' time heard the distressing cry 'the god Pan is dead' issuing from a lonely island, now, throughout the Hellenic world, this cry resounded like an agonized lament: 'Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself died with it! Away, away with you, puny, stunted imitators! Away with you to Hades, and eat your fill of the old masters' crumbs!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Mit dem Tode der griechischen Tragödie dagegen entstand eine ungeheure, überall tief empfundene Leere; wie einmal griechische Schiffer zu Zeiten des Tiberius an einem einsamen Eiland den erschütternden Schrei hörten "der grosse Pan ist todt": so klang es jetzt wie ein schmerzlicher Klageton durch die hellenische Welt: "die Tragödie ist todt! Die Poesie selbst ist mit ihr verloren gegangen! Fort, fort mit euch verkümmerten, abgemagerten Epigonen! Fort in den Hades, damit ihr euch dort an den Brosamen der vormaligen Meister einmal satt essen könnt!"
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 54

Death, God, Age, World

Quotes about happiness page 7

Related topics

Quotes about happiness
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