Quotes about happiness (5345 quotes, page 25)

“Wherever we look the dreadful disintegration of the bridges of life, the capillaries and the bodies they have created, is evident, which has been caused by the mechanical and mindless work of man, who has torn away the soul from the Earth's blood - water. The more the engineer endeavors to channel water, of whose spirit and nature he is today still ignorant, by the shortest and straightest route to the sea, the more the flow of water weighs into the bends, the longer its path and the worse the water will become. The spreading of the most terrible disease of all, of cancer, is the necessary consequence of such unnatural regulatory works. These mistaken activities - our work - must legitimately lead to increasingly widespread unemployment, because our present methods of working, which have a purely mechanical basis, are already destroying not only all of wise Nature's formative processes, but first and foremost the growth of the vegetation itself, which is being destroyed even as it grows. The drying up of mountain springs, the change in the whole pattern of motion of the groundwater, and the disturbance in the blood circulation of the organism - Earth - is the direct result of modern forestry practices. The pulse-beat of the Earth was factually arrested by the modern timber production industry. Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its forests. The forest is the habitat of water and as such the habitat of life processes too, whose quality declines as the organic development of the forest is disturbed. Ultimately, due to a law which functions with awesome constancy, it will slowly but surely come around to our turn. Our accustomed way of thinking in many ways, and perhaps even without exception, is opposed to the true workings of Nature. Our work is the embodiment of our will. The spiritual manifestation of this work is its effect. When such work is carried out correctly, it brings happiness, but when carried out incorrectly, it assuredly brings misery.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

Life , Death , People , Disease

“Responsible parenthood involves decades devoted to the child’s proper nurture. To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves ‘right-to-lifers.’”

Leonard Peikoff (1933) Canadian-American philosopher

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1993), Chapter 10: Government
1990s

Life , People , Sense , Happiness

“All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/138/mode/1up p. 138

Happiness , Pleasure , Truth , Feeling

“With love, one is also constantly planting the seeds for the success or failure of a partnership, and knowing this, we are especially responsible for the happiness or suffering of those who have opened up to us. The increased intimacy in love relationships leads to an exceptionally fast ripening of both beings’ good and bad impressions in mind.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Buddha & Love: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Relationships (2012)

Love , Failure , Suffering , Success

“That original intelligence, say the MAGIANS, who is the first principle of all things, discovers himself immediately to the mind and understanding alone; but has placed the sun as his image in the visible universe; and when that bright luminary diffuses its beams over the earth and the firmament, it is a faint copy of the glory which resides in the higher heavens. If you would escape the displeasure of this divine being, you must be careful never to set your bare foot upon the ground, nor spit into a fire, nor throw any water upon it, even though it were consuming a whole city. Who can express the perfections of the Almighty? say the Mahometans. Even the noblest of his works, if compared to him, are but dust and rubbish. How much more must human conception fall short of his infinite perfections? His smile and favour renders men for ever happy; and to obtain it for your children, the best method is to cut off from them, while infants, a little bit of skin, about half the breadth of a farthing. Take two bits of cloth, say the Roman catholics, about an inch or an inch and a half square, join them by the corners with two strings or pieces of tape about sixteen inches long, throw this over your head, and make one of the bits of cloth lie upon your breast, and the other upon your back, keeping them next your skin: There is not a better secret for recommending yourself to that infinite Being, who exists from eternity to eternity.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part VII - Confirmation of this doctrine
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Men , Children , Lie , Secret

“And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

可憐光彩生門戸
遂令天下父母心
不重生男重生女
"A Song of Unending Sorrow"

Girl , Boy , Happiness

“Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, says, ‘Since the world is judged by its majority, and the individual is judged by the majority, if he performs one Mitzva, happy is he, for he has sentenced himself and the whole world to a scale of merit. If he commits one sin, woe unto him, for he has sentenced himself and the whole world to a scale of sin.’ (…) Moreover, it is written, “one sinner destroyeth much good.””

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

This is because one sin sentences the person and the entire world to a scale of sin.
Selected Articles

World , Personality , Happiness

“In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end. Neither can mere growth of bulk or power be admitted as a worthy ambition. Nor can a man nobly mindful of his serious responsibilities to society view business as a game; since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

"Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
Extra-judicial writings

Money , Exercises , Game , Business

“The most of us make our backs ache carrying useless, foolish burdens. We carry luggage and rubbish that are of no earthly use, but which sap our strength and keep us jaded and tired to no purpose. If we could only learn to hold on to the things worthwhile, and drop the rubbish, — let go the useless, the foolish, the silly, the hamperers, the things that hinder, — we should not only make progress but we should keep happy and harmonious.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

How to Get What You Want (1917).

Learning , Happiness

“To be “reasonable” means to put oneself into a special, rarely happy relation to the sensuous. “Be reasonable” means, practically speaking, do not trust your impulses, do not listen to your body, learn control, starting with your own sensuousness. But intellect and sensuousness are inseparable. Torless’s outbreak of sweating after two pages of the Critique of Pure Reason contains as much truth as the whole of Kantianism. The understood mutual interaction of physis and logos is philosophy, not what is spoken.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. xxxi

Truth , Learning , Happiness

“A cross borne in simplicity, without the interference of self-love to augment it, is only half a cross. Suffering in this simplicity of love, we are not only happy in spile of the cross, but because of it; for love is pleased in suffering for the Well Beloved, and the cross which forms us into His image is a consoling bond of love.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 169.

Love , Suffering , Happiness

“He who depends on chances and situations to be happy, is a Sansari.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Chance , Dependency , Happiness

“Our idealists must own that their velleity to abolish all suffering is most fully expressed in the Fifth Wisdom of Lamaism, the doctrine that teaches that "no durable happiness, nor yet security, for any sentient being can exist while others are a prey to suffering." That truth cannot be questioned and you may take it to heart: in practical terms it means we got ourselves born on the wrong planet -- in the wrong universe.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"On the Roof of the World", Liberty Bell magazine (December 1987)
1970s, 1980s

Wisdom , Truth , Question , Suffering

“Strange, that ignorance should be our best happiness in this life, and yet be the one we are ever striving to destroy!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life , Happiness

“I know the reason of being born on this world and the happiness of being born and living on this world.”

Ritsuko Okazaki (1959–2004) Japanese singer

"For Fruits Basket", Siki
Lyrics

World , Happiness

“With… small-town life… there are hundreds of thousands… who are not content. The more intelligent young people… flee to the cities… and… stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted… is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment… the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Life , God , People , World

“The nursery of brooding Pelicans,
The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd,
And all the minor spots of rock and verdure,
The abodes of happy millions, were no more.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

Canto VI, line 74.
The Pelican Island (1827)

Dead , Happiness

“Finally, let me explain why this De la Rosa World Summit is the last Neo-Tech summit -- and why that may be the best news. But, first, I want to hail whom I believe to be the most genuinely-happy spirit in today’s anticivilization -- a beautiful person who brings to us her happiness made from the love of life as we travel toward the Civilization of the Universe. Let us emblazon our own spirits by remembering this lovely beam of light -- this enduring beacon of joy, this amazingly-wonderful person -- our free-spirit Summit impresario, Rosa María Wallace. …What a woman!”

Frank R. Wallace (1932–2006) Philosopher, author, entrepreneur

Keynote Address for The Neo-Tech 2003 World Summit. Pax Neo-Tech. http://www.neo-tech.com/neotech/pax-b1/a3.php

Love , Life , World , Beauty

“Here's what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn't prostitute yourself to get a part, not if you're in the right mind. You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Page 42
Love, Lucy (1996)

Parting , Happiness

“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable régime. The peoples living on vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by for his virtues, Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces with many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquillity of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) writer and botanist from France

Vœux d'un solitaire, pour servir de suite aux "Études de la nature", as quoted in The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams (University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 175 https://books.google.it/books?id=o9ugCcZ13BMC&pg=PA175)

Life , Men , Children , People

“On the contrary, it will be a big gift if I am not King. I do not believe my father is happy to be King. He continues to blame me for making him King. I am happy also not to be King. We look too much like each other. He was deposed and I was deposed. History will talk about my father being deposed in 1970 in a coup d'etat. History will talk about Ranariddh as the deposed prime minister.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

[Julio A Jeldres, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/cambodias-monarchy-search-successor, Cambodia's Monarchy: The search for the successor, 2 April 1999, 8 February 2015, Phnom Penh Post]

History , Happiness

“I had to shake the spot cause the game got crowded
I'm devoted and quote it, I'm rowdy and bout it
A No Limit Soldier, and happy to shout it.”

Snoop Dogg (1971) American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

"Get Bout It & Rowdy", Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told (1998).

Quotes , Game , Happiness

“On this subject any general rule is impossible; love, like the chamelion, is coloured by the air in which it lives — and the finer the air the richer the colour. Some young ladies have a happy facility of falling in and out of love; their heart, like a raspberry tart, is covered with crosses.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love , Heart , Happiness

“Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"Letters from Zedelghem", p. 78 (Nook Edition)
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Money , Happiness

“To the extent that we are free we are like God, who has no need of an idea of a God over Godself or of an incentive other than the moral law itself. But to the extent that we are also natural beings, we desire our own happiness in everything else that we desire, and we need the practical postulate of God to bring that happiness together with morality.”

John E. Hare (1949) British philosopher

Source: “Ethics and Religion: Two Kantian Arguments” (2011), p. 165

God , Law , Idea , Nature

“His name was Jermyn, and he dodged all day long about the galley drying his handkerchief before the stove. Apparently he never slept. He was a dismal man, with a perpetual tear sparkling at the end of his nose, who either had been in trouble, or was in trouble, or expected to be in trouble — couldn't be happy unless something went wrong. He mistrusted my youth, my common-sense, and my seamanship, and made a point of showing it in a hundred little ways. I dare say he was right. It seems to me I knew very little then, and I know not much more now; but I cherish a hate for that Jermyn to this day.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Youth, A Narrative http://www.gutenberg.org/files/525/525.txt (1902)

Hate , Youth , Way , Sense

“We need to know ourselves better so that we can realize what we really want in our life. I think that the first condition for a person to be in a successful relationship is to be happy with the person he or she is, in other words to love themselves.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Tarkan Q & A, Tarkan Translations, April 10, 2003 http://tarkantr.blogspot.com/2005/05/q.html,

Love , Life , Thinking , Success

“Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.”

Steven Erikson book House of Chains

House of Chains (2002)

Freedom , Loyalty , Happiness

“I can assure you that there is no career which you will adopt when you leave college that will bring you a more and greater sense of satisfaction and a greater feeling of participation in a great effort than will your work here or in your state or in your community…this generation of Americans — you here who will be in positions of responsibility for the rest of this century — will deal with the most difficult, sensitive, and dangerous problems that any society of people has ever dealt with at any age…The Greeks defined happiness as the full use of your powers along the lines of excellence, and I can imagine no place where you can use your powers more fully along lines more excellent in the 1960's than to be in the service of the United States.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Remarks to Student Participants in the White House Seminar in Government (334)" (27 August 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1963

People , Age , Feeling , Imagination

“To neglect your own mind, that's like to neglect your consciousness. That’s like to give up all hope of joy and happiness, really. You're the only one that can discover for you the meaning of anything. What it means to you. By that, I don't mean intellectual meaning. I mean, what it means, how it makes you feel. You have to see whether you really are happy or not. Whether you really are sad or not. And you have to investigate what goes through your mind.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

1974
1970's, interview, K. Horsfield & L. Blumenthal

Sadness , Hope , Feeling , Joy

“[Manucci says that just before the emperor died, he (Aurangzeb) said:] “I die happy for at least the world will be able to say that I have employed every effort to destroy the enemies of the Muhammedan faith.””

Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717) Italian writer and historian

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.
Storia do Mogor

World , Faith , Effort , Happiness

“Only love can make one happy.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

On n'est heureux que par l'amour.
Letter 155: Le Vicomte de Valmont to le Chevalier Danceny. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_155
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

Love , Happiness

“Lydgate opened the sort of letter…”My dear husband I very good…I come in flying ship…we be very happy…love.” It was as satisfactory a letter as he had ever received from a woman.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Devil of a State (1961)

Love , Flying , Happiness

“I too was filled with a sort of shyness and fear, as I was called to leave 'the world of will and idea' in which I had lived and created, and in whose reality I had believed. But the happy liberating touch of non-objectivity drew me out into the 'desert' where only feeling is real.... and so feeling became the content of my life. It was no 'empty square' I had exhibited but the feeling of non-objectivity. I perceived that the 'thing' and the 'idea' were taken to be equivalents of feeling, and understood the lie of the world of will and idea. Is the milk bottle the symbol of milk? Suprematism is the rediscovery of that pure art which in the course of time, and by an accretion of 'things', had been lost to sight.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

As quoted in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 453
1921 - 1930

Life , Lie , World , Fear

“What would the Israelis do if they could do what they want? They would live in peace with their neighbors, if they had neighbors who would live in peace with them. They would simply continue to build out their high tech sector and thrive. What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want to stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way. This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don't want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It's just that some of us haven't realized it yet.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Why Don't I Criticize Israel?" http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel (27 July 2014)
2010s

Children , People , Truth , World

“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

To My Daughters, With Love (1967)

Happiness

“It is widely supposed that the naked human body is in itself an object upon which the eye dwells with pleasure and which we are glad to see depicted. But anyone who has frequented art schools and seen the shapeless, pitiful model that the students are industriously drawing will know this is an illusion. The body is not one of those objects which can be made into art by direct transcription — like a tiger or a snowy landscape. Often in looking at the natural and animal world we joyfully identify ourselves with what we see and from this happy union create a work of art. This is the process students of aesthetics call empathy, and it is at the opposite pole of creative activity to the state of mind that has produced the nude. A mass of naked figures does not move us to empathy, but to disillusion and dismay.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. 1: The Naked and the Nude

Pleasure , World , School , Art

“What produced this divine serenity, subject to no moods, clouded by no depression, this perpetual Sunday of the heart? It was not merely good nature, not the accident of a happy organization. It was deeper than that. It was the perfect poise resulting from a Christian experience. It was the habit of looking to God in love and to man in love.”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 477.

Love , God , Mood , Nature

“The purpose of his [the Philistine’s] life is to procure for himself everything that contributes to bodily welfare. He is happy enough when this causes him a lot of trouble. For if those good things are heaped on him in advance, he will inevitably lapse into boredom.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Sich Alles, was zum leiblichen Wohlseyn beiträgt, zu verschaffen, ist der Zweck seines Lebens. Glücklich genug, wenn dieser ihm viel zu schaffen macht! Denn, sind jene Güter ihm schon zum voraus oktroyirt; so fällt er unausbleiblich der Langenweile anheim.
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 344
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Life , Happiness

“My pro-life position is I believe there's life. It's not necessarily based in religion. I think there's a life there, therefore the notion of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle (January 23, 2001)
2000s, 2001

Life , Religion , Thinking , Happiness

“Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

7:2457.
Lord Meher (1986)

Love , Learning , Happiness

“The business of a boys' author is not to consider political issues, but to entertain the readers, make them as happy as possible.”

Charles Hamilton (writer) (1876–1961) English writer of school stories

Oxford Companion to Children's Literature: "Charles Hamilton" (pages 235-7)

Boy , Business , Happiness

“If happy I and wretched he,
Perhaps the king would change with me.”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"Differences" in The Collected Songs of Charles Mackay (1859).

Change , Happiness

“If he's happy to sit on an electric chair and tell a truth or a lie then I'm happy to sit on an electric chair and we'll see what the outcome is, because I've got no doubt in my mind what happened.”

Billy Davies (1964) Scottish association football player and manager

Jan 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/31/nigel-clough-billy-davies-assault-allegation
Billy seems to be using the expression "electric chair" when he means a lie detector.

Truth , Lie , Happiness

“Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

A Mortal Antipathy (1885) This statement is often misquoted as "Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness".

Love , Fear , Jealousy , Beauty

“Be, as you have been, my happiness;
Let me sleep beside you, each night, like a spoon.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Woman," lines 170-171
The Lost World (1965)

Sleep , Night , Happiness

“After seeing Orphan, I now realize that Damien of The Omen was a model child. The Demon Seed was a bumper crop. Rosemary would have been happy to have this baby.
Do not, under any circumstances, take children to see it. Take my word on this.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/orphan-2009 of Orphan (22 July 2009)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Children , Baby , Happiness

“Be thoughtful of others all your life and you will be very happy.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Hong Kong, (01 June 2014)[citation needed].

Life , Happiness

“Every discord is a harmony not understood. Happiness is a disease, and pain, a medicine.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

The Way to Peace, Power and Long Life (1945), p. 121 (2001 edition)

Pain , Disease , Happiness

“Only a radical cleaning of social and artistic life as, in the domain of art, is already done by Dada, which is anti-sentimental and healthy to the core, since it is anti-art. Only unscrupulously striking down any systematically bred amateurism in any field, can prepare civilization for the 'New Vision's happiness which is greatly and purely alive in a dew people.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's article: 'Is a Universal Plastic Notion Possible Today?', as cited in 'Bouwkundig weekblad' [a Dutch architectural magazine], XLI 39, 1920, pp. 230–231
this quote of Theo van Doesburg is one of his earliest Dada expressions
1920 – 1926

Life , People , Art , Happiness

“Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters overconfidence. In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant cognitive bias. Because optimistic bias is both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think (Part 1): Daniel Kahneman, bloomberg.com, 24 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-24/bias-blindness-and-how-we-truly-think-part-1-daniel-kahneman.html,
"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)

World , Decision , Future , Happiness

“They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through EDEN took thir solitarie way.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

x.1532-40
Paradise Lost (1667)

World , Way , Nature , Tear

“All that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Mere Christianity (1952)

Money , God , War , History

“He had so accustomed himself to wield the constitutional cat-of-nine-tails, that heaven will hardly be happy to him unless he be allowed to flog the cherubim.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 12

Cats , Happiness

““I want so much.”
Haakon laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “So do we all.”
The prince straightened. “And only in death do we find contentment.”
“Lowering thought. Is there to be no happiness in life then?”
“I think not. Each moment of joy must be paid for by a moment of equal pain.”
“You Dutch merchants, always keeping the books in balance. Do you see God as an accountant?”
William smiled slightly. “If he is he’s a shockingly bad one. I’m more than due for some joy.”
Haakon caught Barbarossa’s reins near the bit and drew the two chargers to a halt. “Then find it in the moment, H. H. Find it in the moment.””

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 7 (pp. 86-87)

Life , Death , God , Pain

“It has been raining for a whole month and I lie in bed in the morning like one drunk or ill, refusing to get up. Suddenly I hear a chorus of birds announcing a clear day. Quickly I pull aside the curtain, push open the window and see the beautiful sun shining and glistening and the forest looks like having a bath. Ah, is this not happiness?”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"Thirty-three Happy Moments"

Lie , Beauty , Bird , Sun

“A person can perhaps succeed in hiding his sins from the world, he can perhaps be foolishly happy that he succeeds, or yet, a little more honest, admit that it is a deplorable weakness and cowardliness that he does not have the courage to become open-but a person cannot hide his sins from himself. P. 182”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

World , Courage , Personality , Happiness

“Ordinarily the enjoyment of sensual pleasures is the highest and only happiness of the average man. There is no doubt a kind of momentary happiness in the anticipation, gratification and retrospection of such fleeting material pleasures, but they are illusive and temporary. According to the Buddha non-attachment is a greater bliss.”

Narada Maha Thera (1898–1983) Sri Lankan monk and missionary

Buddhism in a Nutshell

Pleasure , Happiness

“How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And does n’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Nature, p. 97
Collected Poems (1993)

Fear , Universe , Sun , Happiness

“The Best way to express one's gratitude to the Divine is to feel simply happy.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

In "Paris (1897-1904)", also in Words of The Mother Sri Aurobindo Ashram, (1987) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ljoqAAAAYAAJ, p. 163
Sayings

Way , Feeling , Gratitude , Happiness

“I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I've seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they're told they are supposed to be playing comedy. I… was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women's movement. And I wasn't at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me. I'd never even been to Wrigley Field. I never even enjoyed baseball that much, but I loved being there, the crowd was lovely, and they all sang with me!”

Bea Arthur (1922–2009) actress, singer, comedian

Interview, TV Legends, August 6, 2005

Love , Women , Happiness

“Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows, are as sacred in the eye of Almighty God as are your own. Remember that He who has united you together as human beings in the same flesh and blood, has bound you by the law of mutual love, that that mutual love is not limited by the shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilisation, that it passes over the whole surface of the earth, and embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its wide scope.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech, Foresters' Hall, Dalkeith, Scotland (26 November 1879) as part of the Midlothian campaign; published in "Mr Gladstone's visit to Mid-Lothian: Meeting at the Foresters' Hall" (27 November 1879), The Scotsman, p. 6; also quoted in Life of Gladstone (1903) by John Morley, II, (p. 595)
1870s

Love , Life , God , Law

“Whether happy or unhappy, life is the only treasure man possesses”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

.
The Story of My Life (trans. Sartarelli/Hawkes 2001), Preface, p. 10
Referenced
Variant: [H]appy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses[. ]

Life , Happiness

“For it stirs the blood in an old man’s heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice
And the light of a pleasant eye.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867) American magazine writer, editor, and publisher

Saturday Afternoon.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

Light , Heart , Flying , Happiness

“Disciple: Lord, what is true detachment?
Truth: Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you can quickly grasp the truth.
Take, first of all, the first word -- oneself or myself -- and see what it is. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self. The first self we have in common with a stone, and this is being. The second we share with plants, and this is growing. The third self we share with animals, and this is sensation. The fourth we share with all other human beings: we possess a common human nature in which all are one. The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his or her own - is one's individual human self…
Now what is it that leads people astray and robs them of happiness? It is exclusively this last self. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward this self, when he or she should be returning inward. Thus they fashion their own selves according to what is accidental. In their blindness they appropriate to themselves what is God's. This is the direction they take, and they eventually sink into sinfulness.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God , People , Truth , Fashion

“I have lived as plain Mr. Jinnah and I hope to die as plain Mr. Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title or honours and I will be more than happy if there was no prefix to my name.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

As quoted in Plain Mr. Jinnah : Selections from Quaid-e-Azam's Correspondence (1976)

Hope , Happiness

“One of the things that we can learn [from] the Cubans is that they are highly politically conscientized. …they understand what constitute progress and what constitute the enemy. And they have come to appreciate that they are in the situation they are because of the choice they have made, of not wanting to follow what the big brother America says they must do. And they know that if it was not [for the] illegal embargo imposed on them, they were actually going to be a much much more better country. Look at them, they have succeeded, the better education, better healthcare, the illiteracy levels are extreme low, under difficult circumstances. [The] quality of education, the quality of primary healthcare [of some country's without embargoes] is nothing compared to a country [Cuba] which is suffering from a serious economic embargo. So we can learn from the Cubans through their determination, through their appreciation that they are a unique nation, and have chosen their path, and they will lead by their conviction. [Interviewer Bryce-Pease asks Malema about Cuba's socialist-democratic model, lack of human rights, lack of freedom of association or freedom of speech among the opposition, and whether South Africa should take those as lessons. ] Malema: …if they think that their model works for them I am not the one to impose on them what should be the type of political systems in Cuba. They are the ones who can chose which direction they want to take. [Bryce-Pease: Do you see a model like Cuba existing in South Africa? ] When we can do actually much better, our democratic system is intact, it is working […] but there are a lot of things to learn from Cuba [for instance] inculcating the history of the revolution in our education system, so that everybody else is conscientized… Of course there will be some few elements who are not happy. … [Castro] is bound to commit mistakes but generally we are more than happy with the type of work he has done for the Cubans and for the Africans as well, having contributed to the decolonization of Africa and the defeat of apartheid in southern Africa…”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

In Cuba, after paying his respects at Fidel Castro's funeral, Julius Malema in Cuba for Castro's funeral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQy8ALs-aIo, SABC News (5 December 2016)

Education , History , Understanding , Thinking

“Your culture is different to ours. We're not ready for all this in Brazil because no father would ever take pride in having a gay son. Pride? Happiness? Celebrating if his son turns out gay? No way. Look, you have to have some sort of moral compass bearing in your life. They want to reach our children in order to turn the children into gay adults to satisfy their sexuality in the future. So these are the fundamentalist homosexual groups that are trying to take over society.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Interview to Stephen Fry in October 2013. Jair Bolsonaro provoca polêmica em documentário do ator Stephen Fry sobre homofobia https://vejasp.abril.com.br/blog/pop/jair-bolsonaro-provoca-polemica-em-documentario-do-ator-stephen-fry-sobre-homofobia/. Veja SP (23 October 2013).

Life , Children , Way , Future

“When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican Presidential Debate, 2007-10-21, quoted in [The Republican Debate on Fox News Channel, 2007-10-21, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/politics/21debate-transcript.html?pagewanted=9, 2011-03-01]
asked his opinion on Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's position to do nothing to change the laws that keep abortion legal
Republican Debates

Life , People , Way , Happiness

“Experienced well-being is on average unaffected by marriage, not because marriage makes no difference to happiness, but because it changes some aspects of life for the better and others for the worse.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 38, "Thinking about life", pages 400-401 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Life , Marriage , Change , Happiness

“Happiness is a reward that comes to those that have not looked for it.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Victories
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Happiness

“For some reason I was attracted to civil government and took that. This was my first introduction to the Constitution of the United States. Although I was but thirteen years old the subject interested me exceedingly. The study of it which I then began has never ceased, and the more I study it the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. The good it has wrought can never be measured.”

Calvin Coolidge book The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge

The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, Cosmopolitan Book Corporation (1929), p. 40.
1920s

Study , Happiness

“Christians, awake! salute the happy morn,
Whereon the Saviour of mankind was born.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

A Hymn for Christmas Day (1750)

Happiness

“The lovers, appearing happy,
walk, holding hands.
Though it appears everything is perfect,
only they know the truth.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Appears
Lyrics, Loveppears

Truth , Lovers , Appearance , Perfection

“I truly believe that when you're funny, you're blessed. Your whole life is kind of golden. I was happy, although it was not perfect happiness. There was illness and sadness and death.”

Martin Short (1950) Canadian stand-up comedian

Parade Magazine; January 23rd, 2000

Life , Death , Sadness , Perfection

“So you can't take credit for your talents, but it really matters if you use them. You can't really be blamed for your weaknesses and your failings, but it matters if you correct them. Pride and shame don't make a lot of sense in the final analyses. But they were no fun anyway. These are isolating emotions. What does make sense are things like compassion and love: caring about well-being makes sense; trying to maximize your well-being and the well-being of others makes sense. There is still a difference between suffering and happiness, and love consists in wanting those we love to be happy. All of that still makes sense without free will.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris at Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Discussion on Free Will http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM3raA1EwrI.
2010s

Love , Sense , Suffering , Happiness

“All the same, there is a difficulty. I should like him to be happy in heaven here,
But he cannot come by wishing. Only by being already at home here.”

Stevie Smith (1902–1971) poet, novelist, illustrator, performer

"God Speaks"
Selected Poems (1962)

Home , Happiness

“I also don't think it's unsophisticated to think of God the Father as the spirit that arises from the crowd that exists into the future. You make sacrifices in the present so that the future is happy with you. The question is, then, what is that future that would be happy with you? It's the spirit of humanity. That's who you're negotiating with, because you make the assumption that if you forgo impulsive pleasure and get your medical degree, that when you're done in ten years and when you're a physician, humanity as such will honor your sacrifice and commitment, and it will open the doors to you. So you're treating the future as if it's a single being, and you're also treating it as if it's a compassionate judge. You're acting that out. And maybe, once we figured out that there is a future, we needed to imagine God in that form in order to concretize something that we could bargain with so that we could figure out how to use sacrifice so that we could guide ourselves into the future. Because if sacrifice is a contract with the future, but not with any particular person, then it is a contract with the spirit of humanity as such. It's something like that. To come up with the idea that you can bargain with the future is THE major idea of humankind. We suffer. What do we do about it? We figure out how to bargain with the future. And we minimize suffering in that manner.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

God , Pleasure , Imagination , Idea

“You are within, my Love, and I too am there with you and will be there constantly. No, I will never look for you outside, for you are not there. Rather will I retire into the deepest center of my being, where I shall possess you in a singular repose and delight. IN this simple union, we shall take the greatest delight in each other. And I shall rejoice only in this: that you are my God. With this I am happy, completely satisfied that you are such, and that you will never be understood by any created being. p. 183”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

Love , God , Happiness

“I thought this would be about the last battle of the war — I sincerely hoped so; and I said further I took it that most of the men in the ranks were small farmers. The whole country had been so raided by the two armies that it was doubtful whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses they were then riding. The United States did not want them and I would, therefore, instruct the officers I left behind to receive the paroles of his troops to let every man of the Confederate army who claimed to own a horse or mule take the animal to his home. Lee remarked again that this would have a happy effect.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Source: 1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 67.

Men , War , Family , Hope

“Live. Breathe. It is not fear that we need to live by, but joy, hope. Inside you, in your ocean, maybe it seems barren; maybe it feels as if there is no hope, no kindness, no reason for happiness. But deep within you, undeniably, something rumbles, cries out, wants to be born. Allow the joy to come forward. Allow the hope to exist.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Madrid, Spain September 1990
1990s

Fear , Hope , Feeling , Joy

“ALANZO: Wrongs, like great whirlwinds,
Shake highest battlements. Few for heaven would care,
Should they be ever happy.”

Thomas Dekker The Noble Spanish Soldier

The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622)

Happiness

“"No, no no," she said. "You don't understand. Not that kind of longing. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine … where you couldn't see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn't (not yet) come and I didn't know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Psyche
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

Beauty , Home , Mountain , Understanding

“Happy the poet who with ease can steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une voix légère
Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au sévère.
Canto I, l. 75
As translated by John Dryden
The Art of Poetry (1674)
Variant: Happy who in his verse can gently steer
From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.

Happiness

“It's not my dreams that get me in trouble, it's the things my wife dreams I did… My wife punched me in the middle of the night; I woke up, I was like "Oww! What was that for?" She said "I dreamt you were making out with Faith Hill." I said "I wasn't dreaming anything! Send her over to my dream, we'll both be happy."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered (2004)

Faith , Dreams , Night , Happiness

“Love does not always choose the same dwelling place, it makes many exploits in men here below; It has its night, its day, and its many levels: only the one who has overall happiness is content. It moves, it suffers in God, its first cause and the unique happiness of the celestial Spirits; It is there that it is always equally enraptured, by the Seraphic love which is above all things.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Holy Sepulchre Canticle

Love , Men , God , Suffering

“Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies!”

Joseph Hopkinson (1770–1842) United States federal judge

Hail, Columbia! (1798).

War , Peace , Freedom , Happiness

“The happy talkers tell us that diversity is a boon, making our society stronger and better. Our own lying eyes tell us that it is the source of continual trouble; not merely the solitary "hunkering down" that Robert Putnam discovered, but rancor, disorder, litigation, and violence.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

Lying , Happiness

“America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“How to Love America and Leave it at the Same Time,” Problems and Other Stories (1979)

Happiness

“In order to win this war Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States; he may tear great provinces out of Russia; he may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing. It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe and Asia, but it will not avert his doom. With every month that passes the many proud and once happy countries he is now holding down by brute force and vile intrigue are learning to hate the Prussian yoke and the Nazi name as nothing has ever been hated so fiercely and so widely among men before. And all the time, masters of the sea and air, the British Empire—nay, in a certain sense, the whole English-speaking world—will be on his track bearing with them the swords of justice.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (9 February 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1009
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Men , Hate , War , World

“What's my line?
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows…”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Cleaning Windows
Song lyrics, Beautiful Vision (1982)

Love , Time , Baby , Happiness

“Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Tweet https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-celebrates-cinco-de-mayo-with-taco-bowl-from-his-tower/2016/05/05/ab18e0b6-12ff-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html (5 May 2016)
2010s, 2016, May

Love , Happiness

“A generous relationship rarely knows dramas. One is happy when the partner is happy. And one is happy when growing on three levels: on the physical level, which gives love, material things, and protection; on the inner level— through compassion and wisdom—which provides the motivation for development; and on a deep-lying, secret level where both partners enrich themselves with the qualities of the other and increasingly find their center.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Buddha & Love: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Relationships (2012)

Love , Wisdom , Secret , Lying

“I have found a boat, small with two sails, that would make me happy. Unfortunately, I need one hundred francs.... and I haven't got it! If you want, I could give you two canvases which you could sell, just to make you some many and you could give me the hundred francs... Kahnweiler [Paris' art-dealer] is the only one who gives me money, and just what we need to live on.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Quote from Derain's letter, 23 August 1909 to Maurice de Vlaminck, in Lettres à Vlaminck, p. 205; as cited and translated in 'Report: André Derain's 'Trees by a Lake', by F. Whitlum-Cooper and Cleo Nisse http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Report-Derain-by-F-Whitlum-Cooper-and-Cleo-Nisse.compressed.pdf, p. 10 - note 8

Money , Art , Happiness