Quotes about happiness
page 13

“Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily..”

Source: The Reader

“If happiness is the absence of fever then I will never know happiness. For I am posessed by a fever for knowledge, experience and creation.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Variant: If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Happiness, Knowledge

“It is possible to live happily in the here and now. So many conditions of happiness are available—more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don't have to run into the future in order to get more.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Being Peace

Happiness, Future

“Good health, longevity, happiness, a loving family, self-reliance, fine friends … if you [have] five, you’re a rich man….”

Thomas J. Stanley (1944–2015) American businessman

Source: The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americas Wealthy

Love, Happiness, Health, Family

“I hung up the phone, jubilant, and threw myself into a wall, then pretended to be getting electrocuted. I do this when I'm very happy.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Happiness

“I think to feel this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Happiness, Feeling, Thinking

“But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Happiness, Appearance

“Wasn't there a spell for making yourself happy? Somebody must have invented one. How could he have missed it? Why didn't they teach it? Was it in the library, a flying book fluttering just out of reach, beating its wings against some high window?”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Happiness, Books, Flying

“As the water pounded on my back, I reflected that I must be pretty simple. It didn't take much to make me happy. A long night with a dead guy had done the trick.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

Happiness, Guy, Water, Night

“A way of life that keeps saying 'Around the next corner, above the next step,' works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Life, Happiness, Way, Nature

“And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Happiness, Personality

“… I think I know the secret to a long and happy marriage - just choose someone you can't live without.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Marriage, Happiness, Secret, Thinking

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Happiness, Way, Happy

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Life, Happiness

“They also said she was unconscious and that Valentine wasn’t happy about it. He seems to be waiting for her to wake up.”
“I’d stay unconscious if I were her,” Isabelle muttered.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Happiness, Waiting

“To work with God's happiness bubbling in the soul is to carry a portable paradise within you wherever you go.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

God, Happiness, Soul

“You know, if you have certain frustrations," Ascanio said, "I would be happy to help you work them out."
Derek looked at me, pointed at Ascanio, and punched his left palm with his right fist a few times. I shook my head.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Happiness, Time, Help

“she was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad. And that’s important—you know

Happiness, Sadness, Girl

“I don't know that I've ever felt as happy as I did that day, but then again, it was always like that when we were together. I never wanted it to end.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Happiness

“The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad endingsometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually theending.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Happiness, Sadness

“I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Happiness, Books, Music, Feeling

“My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Happiness, Memory

“I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Pain, Happiness, People, Pleasure

“The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's happiness, the happiness of others.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Happiness, Soul, Heart

“I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.”

Jonathan Coe book The Rain Before It Falls

Source: The Rain Before It Falls

Happiness

“The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Happiness, Way

“But of course there's no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Happiness, Children, Color

“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Life, God, Pain, Happiness

“If you make happy those that are near, those that are far will come.”

Grace Lin book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Source: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Happiness

“She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.”

Agatha Christie Elephants Can Remember

Source: Elephants Can Remember

Happiness, People, Reading

“I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You can not protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar's grandmother to his grandfather after she told him of her pregnancy.
"My Feelings" (p. 180)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

Life, Happiness, Sadness, Feeling

“Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Happiness

“The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Life, Happiness, Freedom

“I want to push the fast-forward button until I get back to happy.”

Terry McMillan book Getting to Happy

Source: Getting to Happy

Happiness

“And if I was humming "Happy Birthday" and smiling stupidly as I fled for my life—well, that was nobody's business, was it?”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Life, Happiness, Smile, Birthday

“It's not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Money, Happiness, Teachers

“The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Happiness, World

“Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Money, Happiness, People, Thinking

“Happiest day of my life when my dad made him human. (Devyn)
Happy for you, bonebag…It cost me my girlfriend. (Vik)
It was a lamp, Vik, not a girlfriend. (Devyn)
I really loved that lamp. She lit up my entire world. (Vik)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Ice

Love, Life, Happiness, World

“And I wonder how Gage knew this is what my soul has craved. He turns me to face him, his eyes searching. It occurs to me that no one in my life has ever concerned himself so thoroughly with my happiness.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Life, Happiness, Soul, Search

“I wish you all a long and happy life”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Life, Happiness, Goodbye

“Sometimes a happy delusion is better than grim reality.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Happiness, Reality

“There's nothing like a head-strong woman to make you happy to be alive.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped (2001)

Happiness, Strong

“I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Happiness, Hope

“I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Love, Happiness, Hope, Loss

“If Sasha’s threatened, Astrid’s upset. If Astrid’s upset, I’m going to kill whatever’s upsetting her until she’s happy again. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dead After Dark

Happiness

“… happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release…”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

Happiness, Courage

“He is happy, whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

§ 6.9 : Of Qualities Useful to Ourselves, Pt. 1
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)

Happiness

“Did anybody tell you that you're a few french fries short of a Happy Meal?”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: This Heart of Mine

Happiness

“Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends… on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.”

Jane Yolen book Briar Rose

Source: Briar Rose

Happiness, Dependency

“Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world.
But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Pain, Happiness, World, Universe

“I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Farewell Waltz

Happiness, People, Stupidity, Wine

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 94.

Happiness, People, Parting, Clothes

“America's political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now More and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

Source: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

Happiness

“I don't trust happiness. I turn it over as if it were a glass at a flea market or a rug at a souk, looking for chipped rims or loose threads.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Happiness

“Americans should never come to Europe,' she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, 'it means they never can be happy again. What's the good of an American who isn't happy? Happiness was all we had.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

Happiness, Cry

“Because I was more often happy for other people, I got to spend more time being happy. And as I saw more light in everybody else, I seemed to have more myself. (250)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Lit From Within: Tending Your Soul For Lifelong Beauty

Happiness, People, Light, Time

“That word again. Happy. It’s a curse. The pursuit of happiness makes us deeply unhappy. It’s a trap. Before anything else happened, there was me in bed, thinking of who you used to be.
I don’t want you to think I forgot.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Happiness, Thinking

“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 (1933) American writer

Love, Happiness, Travel, Gratitude

“I ejaculated about ten minutes ago and the stuff was black. So everything is not normal."

Silence greeted that happy little announcement. Man, if he had hauled off and sucker-punched V, he would have gotten less of a shocked-out reaction.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Happiness, Silence

“An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is always possible to be happy.”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

Happiness, Books, World

“Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Happiness

“What you do in your dreams is never your choice. But it made me happy anyway.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Happiness, Dreams

“She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Happiness

“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”

Dan Millman book Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Happiness, Secret, Motivational, Deep

“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Happiness

“Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Variant: One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You’re paying for it, Mr. Watson - paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty.
Source: Brave New World

Happiness, Truth, Beauty