Happiness Quotes

“We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”
― Anne Frank

“My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“There you go...let it all slide out. Unhappiness can't stick in a person's soul when it's slick with tears.”
― Shannon Hale, Princess Academy

“But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.”
― John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life

“[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
― Carlos Castaneda

“Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

“Just because you are happy it does not mean that the day is perfect but that you have looked beyond its imperfections.”
― Bob Marley

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
― Dorothy Parker

“She had never imagined she had the power to make someone else so happy. And not a magical power, either--a purely human one.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“I don't understand the point of being together if you're not the happiest.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Stories and Poems

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.”
― Mark Twain, Notebook

“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world...

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.”
― Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

“Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
― Epictetus

“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.”
― Stephen Richards

“Is anyone anywhere happy?”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“There is no beauty in sadness. No honor in suffering. No growth in fear. No relief in hate. It’s just a waste of perfectly good happiness.”
― Katerina Stoykova Klemer

“Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“Memory is the happiness of being alone.”
― Lois Lowry, Anastasia Krupnick

“Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go.

Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day.

maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying.

Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.”
― Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.”
― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes