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Quotes about happiness

248 quotes from 159 people

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A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
Helen Keller1880–1968The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933)
- Life & Death
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
- Responsibility
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana1863–1952The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense
- Life & Death
Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
John Keats1795–1821Poems (1820), “Fancy”, l. 1
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933)
- Money
It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
William James1842–1910The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
- Religion
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988“Jubal Harshaw” in the first edition (1961)
- Love
The greatest expression of rebellion is joy.
Joss Whedonborn 1964Acceptance speech for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog at the Creative Art Emmys
There is not one little blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice.
John Calvin1509–1564Sermon Number 10 on I Corinthians, 698. As quoted in John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (1989) by William J. Bouwsma, pp. 134–135.
- Nature
Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
Immanuel Kant1724–1804Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
- Morality
No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
Herbert Spencer1820–1903Social Statics (1851), Pt. IV, Ch. 30: General Considerations
- Freedom
- Morality
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen1775–1817Emma (1815)In context
Everything but happiness is neurosis.
Anaïs Nin1903–1977Feb. 15, 1936
Cheerfulness is…the best promoter of health.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Spectator (1711–1714), No. 387 (24 May 1712)
- Health
Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.
Alan Mooreborn 1953V for Vendetta (1989)