Quotes about happiness
page 5

Aristotle photo

“Happiness depends upon ourselves”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

An interpretative gloss of Aristotle's position in Nicomachean Ethics book 1 section 9, tacitly inserted by J. A. K. Thomson in his English translation The Ethics of Aristotle (1955). The original Greek at Book I 1099b.29 http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekFeb2011&getid=0&query=Arist.%20Eth.%20Nic.%201099b.25, reads ὁμολογούμενα δὲ ταῦτ’ ἂν εἴη καὶ τοῖς ἐν ἀρχῇ, which W. D. Ross translates fairly literally as [a]nd this will be found to agree with what we said at the outset. Thomson's much freer translation renders the same passage thus: [t]he conclusion that happiness depends upon ourselves is in harmony with what I said in the first of these lectures; the words "that happiness depends upon ourselves" were added by Thomson to clarify what "the conclusion" is, but they do not appear in the original Greek of Aristotle. Rackham's earlier English translation added a similar gloss, but averted confusion by confining it to a footnote.
Disputed
Variant: Happiness depends upon ourselves
Source: See http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/aristotle/nicom1b.htm#I9 for the original Greek and Ross's translation; Thomson's translation can be viewed on Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=9SFrNWmO654C&dq=%22happiness+depends+upon+ourselves%22+aristotle&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22happiness+depends+upon+ourselves%22+.
Source: Rackham's translation of this passage is available here http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D9%3Asection%3D8

B.F. Skinner photo
Bertrand Russell photo
W.B. Yeats photo
Etgar Keret photo

“The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn't matter how others see you.”

Variant: As long as you know who you are, and see what makes you happy, it doesn't matte how others see you
Source: Every Soul a Star

Christopher Morley photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Graham Greene photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

As quoted in Think, Vol. 27 (1961), p. 32
Disputed

Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Christopher Paolini photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“Is anyone anywhere happy?”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Thomas Paine photo
Joel Osteen photo
Joe Hill photo

“She'd thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Helen Oyeyemi photo
Charles Alexander Eastman photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo

“Making others happy, through kindness of speech and sincerity of right advice, is a sign of true greatness. To hurt another soul by sarcastic words, looks, or suggestions, is despicable.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Source: Where There is Light: Insight and Inspiration for Meeting Life's Challenges

Bertrand Russell photo

“The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Said in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood; quoted in Alan Wood's Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7
1950s

William Saroyan photo

“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Source: My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Bertrand Russell photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

Edward St. Aubyn photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Carol Gilligan photo
W.B. Yeats photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Stefan Zweig photo
Orhan Pamuk photo
Michael J. Fox photo
Frank Zappa photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 56
The Gay Science (1882)

Franz Schubert photo
Leo Buscaglia photo

“Every moment spent in unhappiness is a moment of happiness lost.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Source: The Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story Of Life For All Ages

Karl Marx photo

“Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Attributed to Karl Marx, a composer with the same name.
Misattributed

George Harrison photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Freya Stark photo

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”

Freya Stark (1893–1993) British explorer and writer

The Journey's Echo (1963), p. 161 https://books.google.com/books?id=xlFbAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22There+can+be+no+happiness+if+the+things+we+believe+in+are+different+from+the+things+we+do.%22.

Terry Pratchett photo
Alessandro Baricco photo
Brené Brown photo

“I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Julia Quinn photo

“Happy endings are all I can do. I wouldn't know how to write anything else.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Romancing Mister Bridgerton

Robert Frost photo

“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Title of poem (1942)
1940s

François Lelord photo

“Lesson no. 5: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story”

Variant: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.
Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Jane Austen photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“Yes, if you happen to be interested in philosophy and good at it, but not otherwise – but so does bricklaying. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

When asked "Does philosophy contribute to happiness?" (SHM 76), as quoted in The quotable Bertrand Russell (1993), p. 149
Attributed from posthumous publications

Bertrand Russell photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Ogden Nash photo

“Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"The Parent"; paraphrased variants:
Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
Happy Days (1933)

George Washington photo
Auguste Escoffier photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Emile Zola photo
Anne Frank photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Often misquoted as: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." or "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
This quote is not found in the various Lincoln sources which can be searched online (e.g. Gutenberg). Niether does Lincoln appear more generally to use the phrase "making up {one's} mind". The saying was first quoted, ascribed to Lincoln but with no source given, in 1914 by Frank Crane and several times subsequently by him in altered versions. It was later quoted in How to Get What You Want (1917) by Orison Swett Marden (Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1917), 74, again without source. Alternative versions quoted are: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" and "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."


Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/20/happy-minds/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPeople%20are%20about%20as%20happy,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D&text=Remember%20Lincoln's%20saying%20that%20%E2%80%9Cfolks,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D

Curiously in later books Crane, e.g. Four Minute Essays, 1919, Adventures in Common Sense, 1920, "21", 1930, Crane mentions other routes to happiness and does not again use this quote.

Marden used a great many quotes in his writings, without giving sources. Whilst sources for many of the quotes can be found, this is not true for all. For instance he mentions another story in which Lincoln says "Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on"; this also does not seem to found in Lincoln sources.

Victor Hugo photo

“The malicious have a dark happiness.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Terry Pratchett photo
Nora Roberts photo

“Don't give up on your own happy-evers.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Genuine Lies

Jane Austen photo
Alain de Botton photo
Muhammad Ali photo
Emile Zola photo

“I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.”

Source: J'accuse! (1898)
Context: In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29/7/1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.
As for the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, and I bear them neither ill will nor hatred. To me they are mere entities, agents of harm to society. The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.
I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight! I am waiting.

Anne Frank photo

“Riches can all be lost, but that happiness in your own heart can only be veiled, and it will bring you happiness again, as long as you live.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Roberto Bolaño photo
Corrie ten Boom photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Aristotle photo
Barack Obama photo
Ovid photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.”

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?

Rose Wilder Lane photo
Colette photo

“Be happy.
It's one way of being wise.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

6.43
Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Susan B. Anthony photo

“Independence is happiness.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

“The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Jeremy Bentham photo

“Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Advise to a young girl (22 June 1830)
Context: Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.

John Lennon photo

“Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 171

Mary Baker Eddy photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Stephen King photo