Quotes about happiness (5345 quotes, page 36)

“Societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 3 (p. 20)

Life , Help , Happiness

“I was happy, but I am now in possession of knowledge that this is wrong. Happiness isn't so bad for a woman. She gets fatter, she gets older, she could lie down, nuzzling a regiment of men and little kids, she could just die of the pleasure. But men are different, they have to own money, or they have to be famous, or everybody on the block has too look up to them from the cellar stairs.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"An Interest in Life" (1959)

Men , Money , Pleasure , Lie

“In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing. He brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops. He embraces a profession and gives it up. He settles in a place which he soon afterward leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics and if at the end of a year of unremitting labour he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XXIX.

Men , Travel , Tree , Housing

“It is always a matter of regret from the personal point of view when divergences arise between colleagues, but it is the team that matters and not the individual, and I am quite happy about the strength and the power of the team, and so I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local difficulties, and then turn to the wider vision of the Commonwealth.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

"Mr Macmillan sets out", The Times, 8 January 1958, p. 8
Statement to the press at Heathrow Airport, 7 January 1958. Macmillan was refusing to postpone a Commonwealth tour despite the resignation of the entire Treasury team of ministers.
1920s-1950s

Personality , Happiness

“Of course I should be very happy to sell a drawing but I am happier still when a real artist like Weissenbruch says about an unsalable??? study or drawing: "That is true to nature, I could work from that myself."”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Febr. 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 20 (letter 177)
1880s, 1882

Nature , Study , Drawing , Happiness

“Some years ago, an American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, felt the same kind of instinctive revolt against the 'atmosphere' of Freudian psychology, with its emphasis on sickness and neurosis, and decided that he might obtain some equally interesting results if he studied extremely healthy people. He therefore looked around for the most cheerful and well-adjusted people he could find, and asked for their co-operation in his studies. He soon discovered and interesting fact: that most extremely healthy people frequently experience of intense affirmation and certainty; Maslow called these 'peak experiences.' No one had made this discovery before because it had never struck anyone that a science calling itself 'psychology' and professing to be a science of the human mind (not merely the sick mind), ought to form its estimate of human beings by taking into account healthy minds as well as sick ones. A sick man talks obsessively about his illness; a healthy man never talks about his health; for as Pirandello points out, we take happiness for granted, and only begin to question life when we are unhappy. Hence no psychologist ever made this simple and obvious discovery about peak experiences.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), p. 15

Life , People , Health , Question

“A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The Fountain, st. ?? (1799).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Youth , Age , Beauty , Happiness

“How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Six (p. 170).

Books , Study , Past , Future

“The holy Moses … discarded passion in general and detesting it, as most vile in itself and in its effects, denounced especially desire as a battery of destruction to the soul, which must be done away with or brought into obedience to the governance of reason, and then all things will be permeated through and through with peace and good order, those perfect forms of the good which bring the full perfection of happy living.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

75-77.
On the Special Laws

Peace , Soul , Passion , Perfection

“A man … found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner (2003)

Sadness , Way , Mountain , Tear

“Each moment of the happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.”

Aphra Behn (1640–1689) British playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer

The Younger Brother, Act III, sc. ii (published posthumously 1696).

For Him , Life , Age , Lovers

“…the Indian tradition of non-violence and purity of motive and means, the tradition of ethical and religious approach to all political questions and noted that these had found a perfect embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi…One could draw up a whole declaration of human rights in terms of ahimsa. If individuals and nations are animated by such a belief in a beneficent Supreme Power; in truth and in human brotherhood, we can look forward to a future free from anxiety and fear and full of hope and promise of happiness.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

In another of his speeches on Indian tradition quoted in "Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar".

Truth , Fear , Hope , Motivation

“Anyone who has read Yeats’s wonderful Autobiography will remember his Sligo—shabby, shadowed, half country and half sea, full of confused romance, superstition, poverty, eccentricity, unrecognized anachronism, passion and ignorance and the little boy’s misery. Yeats was treated well but was bitterly unhappy; he prayed that he would die, and used often to say to himself: “When you are grown up, never talk as grown-up people do of the happiness of childhood.””

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

“The Development of Yeats’s Sense of Reality”, p. 89
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

People , Boy , Passion , Reading

“On our present course, this may eventually stand as the ultimate achievement of Homo sapiens sapiens. We should take a bow. We are obviously planet killers. The question is, can we also be planet saviors? I'd say that seems unlikely. Happy Earth Day.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

(22 April 2004)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2004

Question , Happiness

“"But there are times when being happy — just happy, nothing else — is simply vile."
"Why?" Jill inquired.
"Because," Enrique reasoned, "one cant be happy in a place where everybody is unhappy."”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Source: Detective Story (2008), p. 55.

Time , Happiness

“His was a life which lacked, perhaps, the sublimer emotions which raised Man to the level of the gods, but it was undeniably an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled, but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he died, would not live for ever in England's annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live for ever in England's annals. He was possibly as nearly contented a human being can be in this century of alarms and excursions.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Something Fresh

Something Fresh (1915)

Life , God , Pain , Happiness

“Each one fashions and bears his world with him, and that unless he himself become wise, strong and loving, no change in his circumstances can make him rich or free or happy.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 5

Love , World , Fashion , Strong

“I now receive inquiries of interest for deanships and departmental chairs several times a year. I find myself on committees where I am the only woman and there is one black man. We two tokens greet each other wryly. I am frequently invited to lecture at architecture schools, ‘to be a role model for our girls.’ I am happy to do this for their young women but I would rather be asked purely because my work is interesting.”

Denise Scott Brown (1931) American architect

"Sexism and the star system in architecture"

Women , School , Girl , Time

“I never did a western while at Universal. I did a variety of roles, including ‘The Climax’ with Boris Karloff. There is a huge painting of me in the film. When it was over, Ernest Pagano, one of the producers, put it up in his office. It took up most of the wall! I wasn’t happy because people thought we were having an affair—which I never have and never would do.”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

People , Universe , Painting , Happiness

“I suppose we must each ask of ourselves—or each other, have fun with it, it could be a quiz—two fundamental questions: 1. Are you happy with things the way they are? And 2. Do you believe that things could be better?”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Way , Question , Happiness

“One day you think you never even made a choice and then you have to make one, even a wrong one, just so you're sure you're still able. And once that's over, you can go back and be happy again with what you were before you started worrying.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: A Piece of My Heart (1976), p. 276

Thinking , Happiness

“I can't say that I'm crazy, you know, about watching this. I don't like the person who I was back at this time, and-and, uh… I think I had all my priorities in the wrong places and I think if I were to spend to much time playin guitar as I did picking out stupid shorts and stupid hats and stupid, you know, overcoats, I would've… I would've been able to write some good songs, you know? I can't watch this version of myself and be at all happy about it. I want to… I want to strangle myself when I see this video. I was 18 years old. 18-year-old that deserved to be slapped upside his head.”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

On "Higher Ground" video audio commentary - Red Hot Chili Peppers Greatest Videos

Stupidity , Thinking , Time , Personality

“All my moves were designed to promote the happiness and wellbeing of my family, rather than fame.”

Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross (1902–2003) British politician

As quoted in his obituary in The Times (11 July 2003) http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/Nuremberg/Times110703.html

Family , Happiness

“Everyone points to the other man, who, according to him, is happier But the only one, who has the courage to declare that he is truly happy, is he who has relinquished all his passions and hungers from within.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Hunger , Courage , Passion , Happiness

“It is thought by many, and said by some, that this republic has already seen its best days; that the historian may now write the story of its decline and fall. Two classes of men are just now especially afflicted with such forebodings. The first are those who are croakers by nature. The men who have a taste for funerals, and especially national funerals. They never see the bright side of anything, and probably never will. Like the raven in the lines of Edgar A. Poe, they have learned two words, and those are, 'never more'. They usually begin by telling us what we never shall see. Their little speeches are about as follows: You will never see such statesmen in the councils of the Nations as Clay, Calhoun and Webster. You will never see the south morally reconstructed and our once happy people again united. You will never see this Government harmonious and successful while in the hands of different races. You will never make the negro work without a master, or make him an intelligent voter, or a good and useful citizen. This last never is generally the parent of all the other little 'nevers' that follow.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , People , Intelligence , Nature

“Elliott: "Do you want to hear a happy or a sad song?"Crowd: "Happy!"Elliott: "Old or new?"Crowd: "Old!"Elliott: "Happy and old, that's a strange choice."”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Lyrics, New Moon (posthumous, 2007)

Sadness , Happiness

“The ones [compliments] I value most came from Edgar Degas who said he was happy to see my work becoming more and more pure. The etcher Bracquemond, a pupil of Ingres, said - possibly he meant what he said - that my work shows increasing strength. I will calmly tread the path I have taken, and try to do my best. At bottom, I have only a vague sense of its rightness or wrongness. I am much disturbed by my unpolished and rough execution. I should like to develop a smoother technique which, while retaining the old fierceness, would be rid of those jarring notes which make it difficult to see my canvases clearly except when the light falls in front. There lies the difficulty - not to speak of drawing.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, Paris, 4 May 1883, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, pp. 29-30
his comment after having seen his own painting-show at Durand-Ruel 's gallery in Paris, May 1883
1880's

Sense , Light , Drawing , Happiness

“God Almighty, dear God, good to me, gave me a sweet tongue, and these sad and lonely folk will hear me and they shall be happy.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

God , Sadness , Happiness

“Of course, shedding the debt burden would be a happy development for our country, but it would nevertheless pose a big dilemma for the Fed. Our primary lever of monetary policy was buying and selling treasury securities-Uncle Sam's IOU's. But as the debt was paid down, those securities would grow scarce, leaving the Fed in need of a new set of assets to effect monetary policy.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Source: 2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008), Chapter Ten, "Downturn", p. 214.

Country , Happiness

“Why should Ossian sing of battles? For never more shall my steel shine in war. I remember the days of my youth with grief; when I feel the weakness of my arm. Happy are they who fell in their youth, in the midst of their renown! They have not beheld the tombs of their friends, or failed to bend the bow of their strength.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The War of Caros"
The Poems of Ossian

War , Youth , Feeling , Singing

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within." At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

The First Dive, p. 3
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Truth , Way , Thinking , Time

“I'm fulfilled in what I do… I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes — the finer things of life — would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As quoted in Mary Lou Retton's Gateways to Happiness (2000) by Mary Lou Retton, David Bender, p. 213

Life , Money , Sense , Clothes

“It's all false pressure; you put the heat on yourself, you get it from the networks and record companies and movie studios. You put more pressure on yourself to make everything that much harder. You say, 'Well, I'll get all screwed up and then it'll be a real challenge again.' So stupid—I've often wondered why people do these things. You're so much happier if you don't, but I guess happiness is not a state you want to be in all the time.”

John Belushi (1949–1982) American comedian, actor, and musician

Source: Bob Woodward. Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi. p. 209 ; Form interview in Cosmopolitan, December 1981, according to: Robert Andrews (2003), The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations. p. 144

People , Stupidity , Time , Falseness

“By a kind of happy pre-established harmony, such as a later age discovered between the needs of society and the self-interest of the individual, success in business is in itself almost a sign of spiritual grace, for it is a proof that a man has laboured faithfully in his vocation.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

describing the Puritan view, Part IV, Ch. 4
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Age , Business , Success , Happiness

“Theologian: But what is to love?
Philosopher: To be delighted by the happiness of another.”
Theologus: Amare autem? Philosophus: Felicitate alterius delectari.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Confessio philosophi (1673)

Love , Happiness

“If this be a happy new year, a year of usefulness, a year in which we shall live to make this earth better, it is because God will direct our pathway. How important, then, to feel our dependence upon Him!”

Matthew Simpson (1811–1884) American bishop and academic

American clergyman and bishop http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/authors/matthew_simpson_a001.htm, Giga-usa.com.

God , Feeling , Dependency , Happiness

“A boy's hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness, and the song woke
His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.”

Galway Kinnell (1927–2014) Poet

First Song (1983).

Love , Sadness , Boy , Heart

“Twas in the prime of summer-time
An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys
Came bounding out of school:
There were some that ran and some that leapt,
Like troutlets in a pool.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

1840s, The Dream of Eugene Aram

School , Boy , Time , Summer

“When we are about to set forth on a path hitherto untried and likely to lead our lives in a new direction, it appears eminently desirable and proper that we should, in the first place, briefly review the public and private life of the day, in order to determine whether the essential elements that make up the happiness of states and individuals are all duly provided, and if not, where the need lies and how it can best be supplied.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876)

Life , Appearance , Happiness

“They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?”

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997) First wife of Charles, Prince of Wales

"Princess Diana: 10 most inspiring quotes from the 'people's princess'", Hello Magazine, Daily News (1 July 2015)

Happiness

“The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence—to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Life , Happiness

“What a thing it is to lie there all day in the fine breeze, with the pine needles dropping on one, only to return to the hotel at night so hungry that the dinner, however homely, is a fete, and the menu finer reading than the best poetry in the world! Yet we are to leave all this for the glare and blaze of Nice and Monte Carlo; which is proof enough that one cannot become really acclimated to happiness. (10 September 1902) in the village of Cavalaire, France.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 13

Lie , World , Home , Reading

“Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers", nor has the iron entered their souls. The world has no hand on them.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"Mind and Motive"
Winterslow: Essays and Characters (1850)

Youth , World , Faith , Dreams

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

Preface to the Second Edition [Tr. F. Max Müller], (New York, 1900), p. 690; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14022383M/Memorabilia_mathematica, Published 1914. p. 10
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

People , Hope , Way , History

“You want me to go into a sewer, Mister Sharpe?' Sarah asked in a small voice.
'No, miss, I don't', Sharpe said. 'I want you to be in green fields and happy, with enough money to last you the rest of your life. But to get you there I have to go through a sewer.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

Life , Money , Happiness

“A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 1207, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Thinking , Silence , Happiness

“A man practicing Dharma, Artha and Kama enjoys happiness both in this world and in the world to come. The good perform these actions in which there is no fear as to what is to result from them in the next world, and in which there is no danger to their welfare. Any action which conduces to the practice of Dharma, Artha and Kama together, or of any two, or even one of them should be performed. But an action which conduces to the practice of one of them at the expense of the remaining two should not be performed.”

Vātsyāyana Indian logician

Source: The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks http://books.google.com/books?id=SbEZWRTwsToC&pg=PT27, Library of Alexandria, p. 27

World , Fear , Happiness

“How is it possible for me to thank God in my heart for the food he gives me and for life, while every morsel I eat I earn with my toil and even suffering? There may be a Providence for the rich man, but every poor man must be his own Providence. As for the value of life, we poor folks don’t live for ourselves at all; we live for other people. I often wonder if the rich man who owns great blocks of stock in the road and reckons his wealth in the millions does not sometimes think, as he sits at his well-filled table and looks at the happy faces of his children, of the poor car driver who toils for his benefit for a dollar and ninety cents a day, and is lucky if he tastes meat twice a week and can give the little ones at home warm clothes and blankets for the winter.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 17 (p. 252)

Life , God , Children , People

“I consider it extremely doubtful whether the happiness of the human race has been enhanced by the technical and industrial developments that followed in the wake of rapidly progressing natural science.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Science and Humanism (1951)

Nature , Science , Happiness

“And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.”

Philip Larkin book The Less Deceived

Coming
The Less Deceived (1955)

Feeling , Understanding , Laughter , Childhood

“I Thaddeus Kosciuszko being just in my departure from America do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentary disposition of my property in the United States I hereby authorise my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others and giving them liberty in my name, in giving them an education in trades or otherwise and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neighbours, good fathers or mothers, husbands or wives and in their duties as citizens teaching them to be defenders of their liberty and Country and of the good order of society and in whatsoever may make them happy and useful and I make the said Thomas Jefferson my executor of this.”

Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817) Polish and American military leader

T. Kosciuszko, 5th day of May 1798. (See The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 30, Princeton 2004, p. 332-333). Note: Thomas Jefferson never did carry out this request.
Version of 5 May 1798

Education , Departure , Country , Happiness

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life , Men , Fate , Children

“All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Enoch Powell, Joseph Chamberlain (Thames and Hudson, 1977), p. 151
1970s

Failure , Nature , Happiness

“Happy (if mortals can be) is the man,
Who, not by priest but Reason, rules his span:
Reason, to its possessor a sure guide,
Reason, a thorn in Revelation’s side.”

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) English poet, forger

"The Defence", line 23.

Happiness

“Thus it comes about that the endeavour of primitive people to make a clean sweep of all their troubles generally takes the form of a grand hunting out and expulsion of devils and ghosts. They think that if they can only shake off these their accursed tormentors, they will make a fresh start in life, happy and innocent; the tales of Eden and the old poetic golden age will come true again.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 56, The Public Expulsion of Evils.

Life , People , Age , Thinking

“Formerly, it may be said, my whole being was possessed by egoism. All my manifestations and experiencings flowed from my vanity. The meeting with Father Giovanni killed all this, and from then on there gradually arose in me that "something" which has brought the whole of me to the unshakable conviction that, apart from the vanities of life, there exists a "something else" which must be the aim and ideal of every more or less thinking man, and that it is only this something else which may make a man really happy and give him real values, instead of the illusory "goods" with which in ordinary life he is always and in everything full.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)

Life , Thinking , Happiness

“Well, I think there are people who are getting work that they wouldn't otherwise have. For many of them apparently, it fits in with their lifestyles, so that they can make their own schedules. I think you've got a company that is expanding and delivers, what? A hundred million parcels a year. So somebody's happy with the service, and somebody's happy doing the job.”

Irwin Stelzer (1932) American economist and columnist

Newsnight debate (2010)

People , Thinking , Happiness

“My initially happy interest in the game Warcraft 3 had an ominous tone to it. This was the beginning of a long relationship with the Warcraft franchise. In less than a year from that point, they would release their ultimate game, World of Warcraft, a game that I would find sanctuary in for most of my teenage years.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

World , Game , Happiness

“In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Life , Question , Change , Heart

“Happiness is not mere pleasure, not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

How to be happy though rich or poor (1930)

Pleasure , Wealth , Happiness

“Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter IV

World , Happiness

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch.7

Life , Children , Home , Lovers

“The achievement of happiness requires not the … satisfaction of our needs … but the examination and transformation of those needs.”

Stanley Cavell (1926–2018) American philosopher

Pursuits of Happiness (1984)

Happiness

“To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

Manders, Act I
Ghosts (1881)

World , Happiness

“I am awestruck and I am happy to see that the book fair happens. I’ve learnt everything I know on the go, like my mother tongue.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

Kamal Hassan: A universal legend

Books , Happiness

“I LOVED her! ay, I would have given
A death-bed certainty of heaven
If I had thought it could confer
The least of happiness on her!”

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

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Death , Happiness

“It's really weird but my parents used to tell me I could do anything I wanted to. I used to say, 'Well, what if I want to be an astronaut and go to the moon?" and my dad used to say, 'If you really want to you can'. I used to think he was talking absolute rubbish, particularly when I was 21 and he was still saying that. But in a way it really stuck with me cos my dad ended up doing exactly what he wanted to do. To an outside point of view he's totally conformed, he's had a family and four kids but he's only ever done things that made him genuinely happy. "He jacked in his job cos it made him unhappy and he didn't want to compromise his entire life just for the sake of carrying it through. It's very admirable, that quality, and I think it's very rare in people. Most people feel so conditioned, so oppressed by everything that goes on around them that they just give in. You have to refuse to give in.”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

Melody Maker, March 7th 1992

Life , People , Family , Way

“I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Thinking , Happiness

“To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal. Individuals like myself are often called 'workaholics'. I question this term because that implies a pathological condition or an illness. If I do what I desire more than anything else in the world and which makes me happy, such work can never be an aberration.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 89.

World , Question , Happiness

“That's when I asked her where was that actress
She said "That was somebody else"
And then I asked her why she looked so happy now
She said "I finally like myself, at last I like myself."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Sequel
Song lyrics, Sequel (1981)

Happiness

“While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together….”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. XIV, ch. 12
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Life , Truth , World , Freedom

“Happier of happy though I be, like them
I cannot take possession of the sky,
Mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there
One of a mighty multitude whose way
Is a perpetual harmony and dance
Magnificent.”

William Wordsworth The Recluse

The Recluse, l. 198 (1805).

Way , Dance , Happiness

“If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.”

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

A Philosophy of Life (Lecture 35)
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Life , Men , Religion , Universe

“It can postpone death, cure disease, release the captive, bring sight to the blind, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, destroy the despot, win the love of women, and procure all reasonable earthly happiness to any man who is not entirely too old. In course of time perhaps it may even resurrect the dead, create life and storm the very gates of heaven, for money is force and force is the essence of the universe.”

Arthur Desmond (1859–1929) New Zealnd writer

Rival Caesars (1903)

Love , Life , Death , Women

“When a beautiful rose dies beauty does not die because it is not really in the rose. Beauty is an awareness in the mind. It is a mental and emotional response that we make. We respond to life as though it were perfect. When we go into a forest we do not see the fallen rotting trees. We are inspired by a multitude of uprising trees... The goal of life is happiness and to respond to life as though it were perfect is the way to happiness. It is also the way to positive art work.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

In 'Beauty Is the Mystery of Life', 1989; a lecture by Agnes Martin, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1989. Printed in Agnes Martin, eds. Morris and Bell, pp. 158–59
1980 - 2000

Life , Beauty , Art , Way

“Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

The actual author of this quote is Roger J. Corless, from his book "The Vision of Buddhism: the Space Under the Tree". The original quote is, "We make ourselves miserable by first closing ourselves off from reality and then collecting this and that in an attempt to make ourselves happy by possessing happiness. But happiness is not something I have, it is something I myself want to be. Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over my body." ( [Corless, Robert J., Vision of Buddhism: The Space Under the Tree, http://books.google.com/books?hl=de&id=KecGAAAAYAAJ&q=sandwiches#search_anchor, 2013-03-07, 1998, Paragon House, 1557782008, 20, 362] )
Misattributed

Funny , Hunger , Happiness

“It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

9
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Nature , Study , Happiness

“In negotiating with rejected lovers or husbands, women must stop thinking they can make everyone happy. In many cases of harassment and stalking, it is clear that the woman never learned how to terminate the fantasy — which requires resolution and decisiveness on their part. Wavering, dithering, or passive hysterical fear will only intensify or prolong pursuit.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 47

Women , Fear , Lovers , Thinking

“It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting—corruption and favoritism, mostly—endemic to the system.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 1 (p. 91).

Happiness

“The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Ethics (New York:1915), § 70, pp. 190-191
The Principles of Ethics (1897), Part I: The Data of Ethics

Happiness

“You can be married and bored, or single and lonely. Ain't no happiness nowhere.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

Happiness

“No, the artists are in a state of belated Age of Reason. They want to get hold of things, like Mondrian. He was a fantastic artist, but now when we read his ideas and his idea of Neo-Plasticism [= De Stijl ] – pure plasticity – it’s kind of silly, I think. I mean, not for him, but I think one could spend one's life having this desire to be in and outside at the same time. He could see a future life and a future city – not like me, who am absolutely not interested in seeing the future city. I'm perfectly happy to be alive now.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

Quote of De Kooning from an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Location', Spring 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 49
1960's

Life , Age , Idea , Thinking

“The deepest and most enduring thirst common to us all is the desire for love and happiness. You and I spend a great part of our lives struggling towards self-fulfilment and joy, while at the same time we are very occupied in the daily responsibilities to our families, our work, the countless little things that absorb our time.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All shall be well (2014)

Love , Family , Time , Joy

“At a single glance I survey the whole Universe.
He will never be happy, whom such pleasures fail to please!”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

"Reading the Book of Hills and Seas" (translation by A. Waley)

Pleasure , Universe , Happiness

“What sweet, what happy days had I,
When dreams made Time Eternity!”

William Henry Davies (1871–1940) British poet

The Time of Dreams.

Dreams , Time , Happiness

“I lean against the wind, pretend that I am weightless, and in this moment I am happy.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Morning View (2001)

Happiness

“Old maids like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and the rich.”

Charlotte Brontë book Shirley

Source: Shirley (1849), Ch. 22: Two Lives

World , Happiness

“God attracts us to Him by instincts, and desires, and aspirations after a happiness higher than sense, and more enduring, more changeless, than this mortal life. God speaks to us articulately in the stirring life of nature, and in the silence of our own being.”

Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) English Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal

Source: Towards Evening (1889), p. 158

Life , God , Nature , Sense

“Tyranny offers relief from the burden of sanity and a licence to enact forbidden impulses of hatred and violence. By acting on these impulses and releasing them in their subjects tyrants give people a kind of happiness, which as individuals they may be incapable of achieving.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: What a Tyrant Can Do For You (p. 57)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

People , Happiness

“But now for the final exam: If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the "hamburgers" they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1997 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Hope , Sense , Future , Happiness

“Staying as I am, one foot in one country and the other in another, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Me tenant comme je suis, un pied dans un pays et l’autre en un autre, je trouve ma condition très heureuse, en ce qu’elle est libre.
Letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine (Paris, June/July 1648)

Country , Happiness

“As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and good will and serenity.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Effect of Thought on Health and the Body

Strong , Joy , Happiness

“It would have been a great disappointment to me if Vibration did not somewhere make itself felt, for all scientistic mystics either vibrate in person or find themselves resonant with cosmic vibrations; but I am happy to say that on page 266 Teilhard will be found to do so.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

Disappointment , Personality , Happiness

“If a few people who have come together for the same purpose sit around a table, we can understand them as parallels making up a unity, like the petals of a flower. When we are happy we do not like to hear a discordant voice that disturbs our joy. Proverbially, it is said: Birds of a feather flock together. In all these examples parallelism, or the principle of repetition, can be pointed out. And this parallelism of experience is, in expression, translated into the formal parallelism which we have already discussed.”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

People , Flowers , Understanding , Bird

“Helen whose face was fatal must have wept
Many salt tears to keep her eyes so bright
Many long nights alone: and every night
Men died, she cried, and happy Paris kept
Sweet Helen.”

T. H. White (1906–1964) author

"PARIS".

Men , Tear , Night , Happiness

“The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind.”

Plutarch book Moralia

οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀγγεῖον ὁ νοῦς ἀποπληρώσεως ἀλλ' ὑπεκκαύματος μόνον ὥσπερ ὕλη δεῖται ὁρμὴν ἐμποιοῦντος εὑρετικὴν καὶ ὄρεξιν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν. ὥσπερ οὖν εἴ τις ἐκ γειτόνων πυρὸς δεόμενος, εἶτα πολὺ καὶ λαμπρὸν εὑρὼν αὐτοῦ καταμένοι διὰ τέλους θαλπόμενος, οὕτως εἴ τις ἥκων λόγου μεταλαβεῖν πρὸς ἄλλον οὐχ οἴεται δεῖν φῶς οἰκεῖον ἐξάπτειν καὶ νοῦν ἴδιον, ἀλλὰ χαίρων τῇ ἀκροάσει κάθηται θελγόμενος, οἷον ἔρευθος ἕλκει καὶ γάνωμα τὴν δόξαν ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων, τὸν δ᾽ ἐντὸς: εὐρῶτα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ ζόφον οὐκ ἐκτεθέρμαγκεν οὐδ᾽ ἐξέωκε διὰ φιλοσοφίας.
On Listening to Lectures, Plutarch, Moralia 48C (variously called De auditione Philosophorum or De Auditu or De Recta Audiendi Ratione)
Moralia, Others

Truth , Motivation , Thinking , Light