Quotes about happiness
248 quotes from 159 people
Stendhal1783–1842De L’Amour (On Love) (1822), Ch. 17, footnote
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Journal (11 March 1856)The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.
J. M. Barrie1860–1937Peter Pan (1904), Act VMen who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970The Conquest of Happiness (1930)Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855Either/Or (1843), Vol. I, Diapsalmata (tr. David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson)There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.
The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.
Confucius551–479 BCAnalects, Chapter VII, § 36Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790“On True Happiness”, Pennsylvania Gazette (20 November 1735).Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and of grief!
Victor Hugo1802–1885Les Misérables (1862), page 746, as translated by Charles Wilbour and provided by A.L. Bert PublishersTrue happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.
Ben Jonson1572–1637Cynthia’s Revels (1600), Act III, scene iiThe secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Said in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood; quoted in Alan Wood’s Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only the unhappy are churlish in deportment.
Christopher Morley1890–1957Where the Blue Begins (1922)
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Candida, Act I (1898)
