Happiness Sayings and Quotes

Happiness is heavily pursued but not so easily found. Perhaps we’re so focused on searching for our happy place, that we forget to enjoy where we are. Below you’ll find a collection of wise and insightful quotes about happiness.

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else. Chinese Proverb
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. George Burns
Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. Henry David Thoreau
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves. Helen Keller
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits. Thomas Jefferson
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. Marcus Aurelius
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. Denis Waitley
Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. Robert Green Ingersoll
Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence. Washington Irving
Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap. William John Bennett
If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time. Josh Billings
Happiness is the art of never holding in your mind the memory of any unpleasant thing that has passed. unknown
Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions. Dalai Lama
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. Leo Tolstoy
Happiness comes when you believe in what you are doing, know what you are doing, and love what you are doing. Brian Tracy
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. George Sand
Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul. Democritus
There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something. Henry Ford
The greater part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. Martha Washington
We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. Frederick Keonig
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity. Jose Marti
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. Carl Sandburg
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling, enduring, and accomplishing. George Sheehan
The bad news: there is no key to happiness. The good news: it isn't locked. unknown
I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness. Drew Barrymore
Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination. Roy Goodman
Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think. Dale Carnegie
The surest way to happiness is to lose yourself in a cause greater than yourself. unknown
Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from a Heaven, at our very door. Tryon Edwards
Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment. J. Donald Walters
Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast. Norman Vincent Peale
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing. William Butler Yeats
Happiness lies in making others happy, in forsaking self-interest to bring joy to others. Paramahansa Yogananda
Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it. Mary Baker Eddy
Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth... Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it. John Templeton
Happiness is not in our circumstance but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are. John B. Sheerin
Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living. Haim Ginott
Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared. Jane Porter
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose Helen Keller
Happiness depends upon ourselves. Aristotle
Happiness is a habit - cultivate it. Elbert Hubbard
Happiness is like peeing in your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel its warmth. unknown
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence about the future. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Happiness is a kind of activity of the soul; whereas the remaining good things are either merely indispensable conditions of happiness, or are of the nature of auxiliary means, and useful instrumentally. Aristotle
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life. Aristotle
Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself. Aristotle
As health produces health, so does philosophical wisdom produce happiness. Wisdom is a part of virtue that once possessed makes a man happy. Aristotle
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of travelling. Margaret Lee Runbeck
Happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose. William Cowper
Happiness consists in the attainment of our desires, and in our having only right desires. Augustine of Hippo
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger's garden. Douglas Jerrold
Happiness does not depend on outward things but on the way we see them. Leo Tolstoy
Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length. Robert Frost
O happiness! Our being's end and aim! For which we bear to live, or dare to die. Alexander Pope
The only ones among you who will really be happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve. Albert Schweitzer
Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe. No path is wholly rough. Ella Wheeler Wilcox
How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes. Shakespeare
Most of us are just about happy as we make up our minds to be. Abraham Lincoln
To be happy is not the purpose of our being, but to deserve happiness. Fichte
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do. Sir James Matthew Barrie
We cannot find happiness until we forget to seek for it. Henry Van Dyke
The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man is without a shirt. John Heywood
A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. Bernard de Fontenelle
Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. Marcus Aurelius
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. Ayn Rand
Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness comes most to persons who seek her least, and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought. It is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it.— The secret of happiness is something to do. John Burroughs
Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn forever. August Strindberg
All happiness is a chance encounter and at every moment presents itself to you like a beggar by the roadside. Andre Gide
Happiness is like mana; it is to be gathered in grains and enjoyed everyday. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated. Tyron Edwards
Happiness is a way station between too little and too much. Channing Pollock
Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman— or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle. George Burns
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions— the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness— it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude. Brené Brown
Perfect happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first snowfall. It's the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events. Joy comes in sips, not gulps. Sharon Draper
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. Eric Hoffer