Happiness Quotes

“One day you just say "To heck with it," and you go looking for trouble, and you find happiness.”

“May I have, through life, a perfect digestion And, also, the full price of a meal! And may I, I pray, have a comfortable bed, Which is asking, I know, a great deal!”

“Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.”

“I don't think most people want to be unhappy. It's just something they've gotten good at.”

“His mother shrugged his troubles from her shoulders and left him to ferment in his own vinegar. But Willie was not happy. He was getting what he asked for, and it was not what he wanted. Perhaps he had never been truly happy in his whole existence. He had been amused at times, but usually then with a cynical delight in somebody's misfortunes or mistakes. How could he have been thoroughly happy when he had never been truly well? What health he had was a negation, a convalescence; it was at best a not being sick. He was of a fabric that broke down and wore through constantly. He could understand the definition of happiness as "having a splinter in your finger and getting it out." But the joy that comes from bounding arteries, glowing skin, a galloping heart, a volcanic desire to laugh because the soul is bursting with laughter, or to sing for mere song's sake, or to be an instrument in the symphonic universe when it is playing one of its mighty ensembles — that cosmic happiness was unknown to Willie Enslee. When he found a rapture he always found something the matter with it; there was a worm in the apple, a slug in the salad, a fly in the ointment, a flaw in the diamond.”

“And contentment is wholly an intellectual process. It is not to be attained by any material achievement.”

“Man should have an intuition of this far-reaching cosmic purpose and then, if he takes care to see that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things, the difficulties of earthly existence will not destroy his peace of mind.”

“BRASSBOUND. I don't say I was happy in it; but I wasn't unhappy, because I wasn't drifting. I was steering a course and had work in hand. Give a man health and a course to steer; and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not. LADY CICELY. Sometimes he won't even stop to trouble about whether other people are happy or not.”

“Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness that is not your own.”

“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”

“Happiness is an occasional brief glance into how simple it all can be.”

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”