Quotes about happiness

page 18

“Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh.”

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

“Be Yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just Be.”

“One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness — simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience.”

“What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.”

“What are you reading?" Owen asks.
"Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died."
"You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.”

“Dear Jack,

I love you, too.

And I think I know the secret to a long and happy marriage— just choose someone you can't live without.

For me, that would be you.

So if you insist on being traditional…

Yes.

—Ella”

“Happy moments, PRAISE GOD
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD
Painful moments, TRUST GOD
Every moment, THANK GOD”

“All happy people are grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain, but it’s truer to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy.”

“But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,' I said. 'He was the great love of her life, you know.'
Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly. 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.”

“The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!”

“i held it up, and tried to channel happy dog thoughts toward Cerberus- Alpo commercials, cute little puppies, fire hydrants.”

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government…”

“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”

“After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.”

“Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious.”

“Being happy or unhappy - is that really the most important thing? Knowing the truth would be a different kind of happiness - a more satisfying kind, I think, even if it turned out to be a sad kind.”

“No, my son, do not aspire for wealth and labor not only to be rich. Strive instead for happiness, to be loved and to love, and most important to acquire peace of mind and serenity.”

“Why are we smiling when we loathe each other?’ ‘Why do we sell happiness to the readers of this magazine when we are profoundly unhappy ourselves, the slaves of fame?”

“It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”

“People who say that money can't buy happiness just don't know where to shop.”

“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”

“All the suffering there is in this world arises from wishing our self to be happy. All the happiness there is in this world arises from wishing others to be happy.”

“Beyond the picket fences and the oil wells, the happy endings, and the fairy tales, is the reality of shattered lives and broken dreams. We carry on.”

“How could you be heartbroken and happy at the same time?”

“I always thought I was happy being the dark star to your supernova.”

“Here is my experience. Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you. What you want to live and be happy in the world is a woman who has her own life and lets you have yours.”

“Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.”

“Happiness is not a feeling, it is a choice. To be happy, one must choose to be happy, not respond to a circumstance that now controls your happiness.”

“Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him.
"Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her.
"It takes a man with real heart"
—he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest—
"to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

“The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.”

“Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure”

“I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they're held together by Scotch tape.”

“Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.”

“If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you’ll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me.”

“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”

“If you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy”

“I was just thinking if the sex with you is one-tenth as fun as arguing with you. I'll be one happy bastard."

"You'll never find out. You--------"

He kissed me.

~ Jack Travis & Ella Varner”

“My bones are brittle, my heart weak and erratic, my esophagus and stomach riddled with ulcers, my reproductive system shot, my immune system useless… I'm not going to have a happy ending.”

“If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”

“Rain falls on everyone, lightning strikes some. What cannot be changed is best forgotten. God made the world, and He saw that it was good. Not fair. Not happy. Not perfect. Good.”

“While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.”

“The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.”

“Each moment is a chance for us to make peace with the world, to make peace possible for the world, to make happiness possible for the world.”

“My happiness has to come from within myself or it is too fragile a thing to be of any use to me and too much of a burden to benefit any of my loved ones.”

“Maybe there was no happily ever after […] but there was happiness sometimes and she had it now, doing what she knew she was born for.”

“Catherine […] enjoyed her usual happiness with Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.”

“You are happy even if you are afraid to admit it.”

“Happiness is German engineering, Italian cooking, and Belgian chocolate.”

“Plutarch rushes to reassure me. "Oh, no, Katniss. Not your wedding. Finnick and Annie's. All you need to do is show up and pretend to be happy for them."
"That's one of the few things I won't have to pretend, Plutarch," I tell him.”

“Please believe him. Keep your heart open to him. He can make you happy. He has always loved you, and you once loved him with all your heart.”

“Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.”

“Happy is entirely up to you and always has been.”

“You will find joy, frustration and sorrow in your quest. Never forget that friendship and loyalty are more precious than riches… Happiness can be brief, but it knows no time in the land of dreams.”

“I know it's not fair to ask you to be with me when we can't even sleep in the same bed, but I'll love you better than anyone else could. I'll take care of you and make you happy. I know I can.”

“‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.”

“Perhaps we can win, he thought. But there will be no happy ending”

“Sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmitted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.”

“He was uncomplicated and upbeat and easy. At one point, I might have thought these traits made him a simpleton, but now I think they just translate to happiness.”

“I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking.”

“It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart.”

“It's good to be just plain happy, it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.”

“I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life.”

“We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.”

“It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals.”

“I really don't think I need buns of steel. I'd be happy with buns of cinnamon.”

“If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.”

“From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year… death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.”

“Happiness is a habit—cultivate it.”

“Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent”

“Love is not an equation… It is not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air.”

“You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don’t know who I am at all. And either way I’m not happy.”

“Be happy, honey. No
one deserves it more. But don't forget… I'm
keeping one little piece of your heart for myself.
And if you ever want it back… you know
where to find it.”

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

“A vital part of the happiness formula is self-discipline. Whoever conquers himself knows deep happiness that fills the heart with joy.”

“You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.”

“Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?”

“Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.”

“She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.”

“There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named—the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.”

“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more”

“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”

“We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.”

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

“We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.”

“You are the best person I've met in years, and if I'd met you in a year's time, or maybe even a few months, I know we could be happy together, but I can't give you what you need.”

“Some men would take happiness where they found it. Especially when they have absolutely no promise of it anywhere else. [Rydstrom]”

“Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy”

“People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

“That's what was wrong with drinking too much. You became immune to drunken delights. There was no solace in liquor. Before you got happy, you collapsed.”

“If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.”

“It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.”

“[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy… Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.”

“You try spending six months sitting at somebody's bedside, waiting for them to die and then tell me that the happy-ending love story isn't one of God's good gifts.”

“I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.”

“How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea.... All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.”

“The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.”

“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”