Quotes about happiness
page 14

“I want her to be happy. It's worth sacrificing myself." -Eddie”

Source: Bloodlines

“I was tanned, happy, and blowing a kiss to Cary, who’d playacted the role of a highfashion
photographer by calling out ridiculous encouragements.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Happiness, Kiss

“Happiness is a decision.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Happiness, Decision

“There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Simply Magic

Happiness

“Her eyes burned, her muscles ached, but in some strange and secret place, she was happy to finally be doing something that wasn't just protecting herself, but protecting other people, too.”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

Happiness, People, Secret

“We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Happiness, Exercises

“There’s too much love in the world. Sometimes I think that’s what heaven is---- a place where everybody’s happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Happiness, World, Thinking

“I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.”

Patricia Highsmith book Strangers on a Train

Source: Strangers on a Train

Happiness, Guy, Silence

“What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together?”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: American Wife

Happiness

“Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Happiness, Children, Nature, Joy

“I try to have reasonably happy endings because I would hate any child to be cast down in gloom and despair; I want to show them you can find a way out of it.”

Jacqueline Wilson (1945) novelist

Hate, Happiness, Way, Despair

“I know that happy things and fun things eventually come to an end. But things that are scary and sad come to an end too… they always do. Even if you can't always believe that, please don't give up. Live.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 21

Happiness, Sadness

“Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, be happy.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

Happiness, Books, Reading

“We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true—if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred—all those things—you will find those too.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

Life, Happiness, Envy

“God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Life, God, Happiness

“Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

Happiness, Smile, Happy

“The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
Context: The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it.

Happiness, Secret

“.. that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Happiness

“Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Happiness

“If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Prep

Source: Prep

Happiness, Time, Waiting, Patience

“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

Happiness, Heart, Happy

“Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

As quoted in Plenty of Time to Sleep When You're Dead : A Compilation of Life-changing Quotes (2006) by Richard Caridi
As quoted in Sprituality in a Materialistic World (2008) by Leslie Klein
Variant: Remember happiness doesn't depend on who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.

Happiness, Thinking, Dependency

“Your success and happiness lie in you.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Happiness, Lie, Success, Success

“always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives”

Nancy Mitford book The Pursuit of Love

Source: The Pursuit of Love

Love, Happiness, World, Water

“Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Life, Happiness, Waiting

“I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Life, Happiness, Thinking

“Be you wise and never sad,
You will get your lovely lad.
Never serious be, nor true,
And your wish will come to you--
And if that makes you happy, kid,
You'll be the first it ever did.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Love, Happiness, Sadness

“The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Marriage, Happiness, Problem, Learning

“your lives be as full and happy as ours, and may the seasons be kind to you and your friends. The door of our Abbey is always open to any travellers roaming the dusty path between the woodlands and the plains.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

Happiness, Travel, Season

“She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

Happiness, Feeling, Thinking

“Money is the best recipe for happiness.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Mansfield Park (1814)
Works, Mansfiled Park
Variant: A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Source: Pride and Prejudice

Money, Happiness

“Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Happiness, Freedom, Happy, Peaceful

“Being sorry won't get you into heaven. Get happy, son. Get that old spring into your step and stay on your toes.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Happiness, Spring

“Happiness had never been like this before. Now it came like sun showers, the sun and the rain together. Happiness was happier than it had been - sharp, piercing, and snatched, like a breath while swimming in surf.”

Elizabeth Knox (1959) New Zealand writer

Source: Dreamhunter

Happiness, Sun

“And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.”

Amy Tan The Kitchen God's Wife

Source: The Kitchen God's Wife

Happiness, Sadness, Way, Feeling

“… and he smiled a lot. The smile did not mean that he was happy. It meant he was stronger than most people, and that he intended to take advantage of it.”

Michael Cadnum (1949) American writer

Source: Flash

Happiness, People, Smile

“Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Source: An Object of Beauty

Happiness

“Happiness must be grown in one's own garden.”

Mary Engelbreit (1952) American illustrator

Happiness

“He loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving--but he could not have her. So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Winter Dreams

Source: Winter Dreams

Love, Pain, Happiness, Strong

“To create souls in men, to create fine happiness and fine despair she must remain deeply proud - proud to be inviolate, proud also to be melting, to be passionate and possessed.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Men, Happiness, Soul, Passion

“too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.”

Amy Tan The Hundred Secret Senses

Source: The Hundred Secret Senses

Happiness, Tear

“beer is an excellent argument that there is a God, and that furthermore, He wants us to be happy.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

God, Happiness, Beer

“Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.”

Darren Shan (1972) Irish writer of English-language fiction under pen name, real name Darren O'Shaughnessy

Life, Happiness, People, Way

“Just by gazing upon her face…
No matter how weary you are,
you will feel happy,
deep inside your heart,
you will feel a warmth
This is a "piece of joy"
This is all the happiness you need.
Normally, we call this "love"…”

Yoshiki Nakamura (1969) Artist

Source: Skip Beat!, Vol. 11

Love, Happiness, Feeling, Heart

“When I was your age… I wish I'd known that I already had everything I needed within myself to be happy, instead of looking for happiness at beauty counters.”

Ilene Beckerman (1935) American journalist

Happiness, Age, Beauty, Beauty

“To me, God is like this happy bus driver.”

Jerry Stahl (1953) American writer

Source: Permanent Midnight

God, Happiness

“Don't punish yourself,' she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Variant: ... there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.
Source: The Book Thief

Pain, Happiness

“Are you happy?" she [Clarisse] said. "Am I what?" he [Montag] cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Happiness

“What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness?”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Happiness, Memory

“That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Happiness, Reading

“Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Happiness

“If you like her, if she makes you happy, and if you feel like you know her---then don't let her go.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Happiness, Feeling

“We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”

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

Life, Happiness, People, Smile

“Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Happiness

“He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that
doesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Happiness

“Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Source: Hiss of Death

Love, Happiness

“He's one fry short of a Happy Meal.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Happiness

“When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf
to turn away from the sun -- it loves it there.
There's nothing so spiritual about being happy
but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

Love, Happiness, Sun

“Oh, I wouldn't say Love always makes you happy. Sometimes it makes you incredibly sad.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Love, Happiness, Sadness

“Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. We found the little kingdom of our passion that all can share who walk the road of lovers. In wild and secret happiness we stumbled; and gods and demons clamoured in our senses.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen

God, Happiness, Secret, Way

“I'm happy. Which often looks like crazy.”

David Henry Hwang M. Butterfly

Source: M. Butterfly

Happiness, Happy

“And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Happiness

“Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

Happiness, Thinking, Reading

“Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.”

Shan Sa book The Girl Who Played Go

Source: The Girl Who Played Go

Pain, Happiness, Game

“That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Pain, Happiness, Reality

“Are you happy?”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Happiness

“Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Book III, Ode 29, lines 65–68.
Imitation of Horace (1685)

Happiness

“We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.”

Robert Wright (1957) American journalist, born 1957

Source: The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

Happiness, Animals

“I loved most when his eyelashes twitched and he blinked, and suddenly happiness was there inside his eyes. Unmistakable. Like a single word printed on a clean white page.”

Augusten Burroughs book You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

Source: You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

Love, Happiness

“Even if times got bad, he would never again deny himself the possibility that the future might be happy even if the present was painful. He would allow himself dreams.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Source: Gregor the Overlander

Pain, Happiness, Dreams, Time

“So long as one is happy one can endure any discipline: it was unhappiness that broke down the habits of work.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Happiness

“Happiness doesn't just flow from success; it actually causes it.”

Richard Wiseman (1966) British psychologist

Source: 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot

Happiness, Success

“I dipped into his brain. He wasn't happy that I wasn't wearing a bra, because my boobs distracted him. He was thinking I was a bit too curvy for his taste. He was thinking he'd better not think about me that way anymore. He was missing his wife.”

Charlaine Harris Dead and Gone

Source: Dead and Gone

Happiness, Way, Thinking

“Know your own happiness.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Happiness

“… why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma (1815)

Happiness, Pleasure, Waiting

“Recommend to your children virtues, that alone can make them happy, not gold.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Happiness, Children

“Personally, I don’t like inherently happy people. I don’t trust them. I think there’s something seriously wrong with anyone who isn’t at least a little let down by the world.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Happiness, People, World, Thinking

“Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

Happiness, Religion

“…I finally understood what true love really meant. …that love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

John Tyree, Epilogue, p. 275
Source: 2000s, Dear John (2006)

Love, Pain, Happiness, Personality

“It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Love, Happiness

“He was poor, yet always appeared to be giving something away; a stranger, yet everyone was his friend; no longer young, but as happy-hearted as a boy; plain and peculiar, yet his face looked beautiful to many.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Happiness, Beauty, Boy, Appearance

“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook (2000)

Love, Life, Happiness, Truth

“love means to see the one you love happy”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, Happiness, Happy

“Congratulations," I tell her with a slight bow. "I hope you and your power trip will be very happy together. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to go.”

Ally Carter book All Fall Down

Source: All Fall Down

Happiness, Hope, Time

“Come now, don't make such a funeral face. It isn't dying that's sad; it's living when you're not happy.”

Octave Mirbeau book The Torture Garden

Variant: “It isn’t dying that’s sad. It’s living when you’re not happy.”
Source: Le Jardin des supplices

Happiness, Sadness

“Happy the eyes that can close”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Source: Cry, The Beloved Country

Happiness

“Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you've got.”

Rosamunde Pilcher book The Shell Seekers

Source: The Shell Seekers

Happiness

“Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.”

Richard Ford book Canada

Source: Canada

Life, Happiness, Parting

“We’d turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we’d survive to talk about.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Life, Happiness

“A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Happiness, Education

“Happiness is pure kitsch; we come into the world to suffer and learn.”

Isabel Allende book La somma dei giorni

Source: La suma de los días

Happiness, World, Suffering, Learning

“you might want to decide fast. We live in a dangerous world. If you see a chance to be happy, you have to fight for it, so later you have no regrets.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Happiness, World, Chance, Fight

“A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Happiness, Personality

“It's settled, then," Grace said. She turned back to Nick. "Take the Jag to the car wash and for heaven's sake clean the McDonald's Happy Meal boxes out of it."

"Hey," Nick said, his face offended. "That's a low blow. Those boxes are collectibles.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Happiness, Cars, Box

“She gave her a reason to write her own words, to see that words had also brought her to life.
"Don't punish yourself," she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Life, Pain, Happiness

“She laughed so easily when she was happy. But also when she was sad.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Happiness, Sadness

“Maybe you can keep me from never being happy, but you're not going to stop me from HAVING FUN!”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Happiness

“I don't know exactly what covetous is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Happiness, Beauty

“He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Life, Happiness, Water, Heart

“Happiness isn't a thing. You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea. It's the way you feel about things.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 311.

Happiness, Way, Feeling, Tea

Quotes about happiness page 14

Quotes about happiness
page 14