Quotes about happiness
page 16

“What’s the best part of being in Hermes cabin?
Connor: You are never lonely. I mean seriously, new kids are always coming in. So you always have someone to talk to.
Travis: Or prank.
Connor: Or pickpocket. One big happy family.”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Files

Source: The Demigod Files

Happiness, Family, Parting

“You must be the best judge of your own happiness.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Happiness

“There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.”

Wallace Stegner book Crossing to Safety

Source: Crossing to Safety

Friendship, Happiness, Home, Time

“You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Happiness, Personality

“maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark into the world.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Lexie Darnell, Chapter 13, p. 205
Source: 2000s, True Believer (2005)
Context: In her new, more mature incarnation, she embraced the idea that maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark in the world.

Life, Happiness, World, Thinking

“We learn our lessons; we get hurt; we want revenge. Then we realize that actually, happiness and forgiving people is the best revenge.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Happiness, People, Forgiveness, Revenge

“When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Happiness, Children, Dogs, Housing

“Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Variant: Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.
Source: V for Vendetta (1989)

Happiness

“Happiness is really rooted in simplicity. The tendency to excessiveness in thought and action diminishes happiness.”

Brian L. Weiss

Happiness

“We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.”

Upamanyu Chatterjee (1959) Indian writer

Source: English, August: An Indian Story

Men, Happiness, People, Peace

“The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love, Happiness, People, Star

“My face felt like my normal face, as if that part of me hadn’t transformed into a bird. [Fine, Sadie. Call me the Carter-headed chicken. Happy? ]”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Happiness, Bird, Parting

“He never felt lonliness except when he was happy.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Happiness

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Happiness

“Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Happiness, World, Way

“The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you'll never be unhappy again.”

Manuel Puig (1932–1990) Argentine author and screenwriter

Source: Kiss of the Spider Woman and Two Other Plays

Happiness, Feeling, Thinking

“I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

Happiness

“Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Happiness, Thinking

“I am learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Happiness, Sadness, Learning

“I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.”

Kay Ryan (1945) American poet

Happiness

“When people see you're happy doing what you're doing, it sort of takes the power away from them to tease you about it.”

Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star

Source: Every Soul a Star

Happiness, People

“I learned you pay for your happiness. That's why I don't expect to be happy all the time. I'd rather be surprised by one moment every so often to remind me that joy is possible, even if I have to pay for it later.”

Esmeralda Santiago (1948) Puerto Rican writer and actor

Source: Conquistadora

Happiness, Learning, Time, Joy

“I don't want to be stinky poo-poo girl, I want to be happy flower child.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Happiness, Girl, Flowers

“Happiness often comes when least expected.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Happiness

“I don't feel the slightest interest in the next world; I think it's here. And I think anything good that you're going to do, you should do for other people here and not so you can try to have a happy time in the next world.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Happiness, People, World, Feeling

“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out — you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”

Henry James Roderick Hudson

Source: Roderick Hudson http://www.gutenberg.org/files/176/176.txt (1875), ch. I: Rowland.

Happiness

“If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Happiness

“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Variant: So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Happiness, Sadness, Time

“Too excited to be genuinely happy”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

Happiness

“Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 26, § 320
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Money, Happiness, Heart

“Don't worry, be happy.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Lord Meher http://www.lordmeher.org/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=6742, by Bhau Kalchuri, pp. 5770, 5970, 6742. The famous Bobby McFerrin song was based on this phrase often used by Meher Baba. Variants: Don't Worry; be Happy! Remember Me; I will help you. As quoted in Showers of Grace (1984) by Bal Natu, p. 92 Do your best, then don't worry, be happy. Leave the rest to me. As quoted in The Homeopathic Revolution : Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (2007) by Dana Ullman, p. 367. General sources Variant: Don't worry, be happy.

Happiness

“With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Happiness, Books, Drawing

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Happiness, Nature

“Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing up against your legs and jumping into your lap.”

William J. Bennett (1943) American politician

Happiness, Cats, Business

“Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.”

John Grisham book The Street Lawyer

Source: The Street Lawyer

Happiness, People, World, Law

“How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Happiness, Stupidity

“It's ideal really. They will come up with a plan. No one will like it. Everyone will feel they have been treated unfairly, but will be happy that their neighbors feel the same. And that is the nature of compromise. Now let's go eat an awful lot.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Happiness, Feeling, Nature

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Happiness, Happy, Family, Anniversary

“But somethings in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.”

Jon Krakauer (1954) American outdoors writer and journalist

Life, Happiness, Thinking

“Well. Like I said, I dont want to fight anymore. I dont want us to hate each other. And… well… I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them. No matter how I fee about us… I want you to be happy”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Hate, Happiness, Fight

“Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen (1988)

Life, Happiness, Memory, Time

“Dogs are a gift to mankind. They are happy and joyful and loyal by nature. They are pure, positive energy and teach by example. That is all that's required of them.”

Alyson Nöel book Radiance

Source: Radiance

Happiness, Dogs, Nature

“Tell me of a happy memory, Zarek. One thing in your life that was good. (Astrid)
You. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Life, Happiness, Memory

“We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we’re happy because we laugh.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Variant: I don't sing because I'm happy. I'm happy because I sing.

Happiness

“If you care about somebody, you should want them to be happy. Even if you wind up being left out.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Happiness

“What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.”

Scott Westerfeld book Afterworlds

Source: Afterworlds

Life, Happiness, People

“And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more- to learning. Always.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Happiness, Learning

“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Happiness, Health, Stupidity, Selfishness

“You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Happiness

“… the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy love”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Variant: I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.
Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Love, Happiness, World

“You don't find happiness in the absence of problems. You find happiness in spite of problems.”

Andrew Matthews (1948) British writer

Source: Happiness Now!

Happiness, Problem

“Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Life, Marriage, Happiness, Personality

“Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Happiness, Pleasure, Imagination, Memory

“For a moment, Percy actually remembered what it was like to be happy. He had an amazing girlfriend. They could have a future together.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Happiness, Future

“I laid it all out for him: Eliza believes in me, she moves me, and she's moved BY me. She makes me happy, she makes me sad, she makes me try harder, she makes me laugh, and she makes me feel like I can fly. Isn't that the goddamn definition of Love?”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Love, Happiness, Sadness, Feeling

“[I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Happiness

“Sometimes when things are particularly bad, my brain will give me a happy dream.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Happiness, Dreams

“Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted in Happyology by Harald W. Tietze, p. 28

Happiness, People

“There is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe…. The soul of the world is nourished by people's happiness.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

The Old King, p. 22.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)

Happiness, People, Truth, World

“Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Happiness, Way

“It broke the spell. It's not that I stopped being happy. I was still inexplicably, utterly happy. But suddenly the happiness had implications.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Happiness

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Attributed to John Stuart Mill in The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, Vol. LXXXV (September 1887), p. 170
Disputed

Happiness, Learning, Motivational, Deep

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Love, Life, Happiness, Effort

“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched".”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Happiness, Motivation, Personality

“Certainly there are times in all of our lives when bad things happen, or things don’t turn out as we had hoped. But that’s when we we must a decision that we’re going to be happy inspite of our circumstances.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

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

Happiness, Hope, Decision, Time

“you know festus means happy in Latin right? You want us to go save the world on Happy the dragon?"
-Jason to Leo in the lost hero”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Happiness, World

“But if we’re going to kill them all, we might as well make an occasion of it.”
Toshak shrugged. “Do as you wish,” he said. “Occasion or not, as long as they’re all dead, I’m happy.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

Happiness, Dead

“Decide what makes you happy and damn what anyone else thinks or says”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

Happiness, Thinking

“Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Source: Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

Life, Pain, Happiness

“One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Happiness, People, Secret, Learning

“I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Source: Animal Dreams

Happiness, People, Feeling

“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”

George Bernard Shaw book Candida

1890s
Source: Candida, Act I (1898)

Happiness, Wealth, Happy

“The only failure is not knowing how to be happy."---My Story”

Céline Dion (1968) Canadian singer

Happiness, Failure

“You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Variant: You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.

Happiness

“They say that extroverts are unhappier than introverts and have to compensate for this by constantly proving to themselves how happy and contented and at ease with life they are.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Life, Happiness

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Happiness

“Envy hurt exponentially more than heartbreak because your soul was torn in two, half soaring with happiness for another person, half mired in a well of selfpity
and pain.”

Diana Peterfreund (1979) American writer

Source: For Darkness Shows the Stars

Pain, Happiness, Soul, Envy

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

Life, Happiness, Secret, Happy

“Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Source: Think and Grow Rich

Happiness

“You could be
the leaf that never falls from the tree
you could be
the sun that never leaves the sky
this might be
the happy ending without the ending
this might be
a reason to try”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

Happiness, Tree, Sun

“Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Happiness, Children, Happy

“You all looked so happy together in the photograph. You looked like the
perfect family. Is there such a thing anymore because if there is, my happy
little unit was definitely not in the queue when they were handing out the
titles.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Happiness, Family, Perfection

“The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Variant: One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be "happy" is not included in the plan of "Creation."
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2, as translated by James Strachey, p.53

Happiness