c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The true measure of a man is how he treats you when others are not looking.
— Alessandra Torre
Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'One grand boulevard with treeswith one grand cafe in sunwith strong black coffee in very small cups.One not necessarily very beautifulman or woman who loves you.One fine day.
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
It sometimes takes a state of solitude to bring to mind the real power of companionship.
— Stephen Richards
The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.
— Sigmund Freud
Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, On the Gods and Other Essays
A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.
— Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
— George Bernard Shaw, Candida
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
— Robertson Davies
Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication.
— Algernon Black
Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.
— P.D. James, The Children of Men
Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I remember watching it all and getting the tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.
— Gayle Forman, If I Stay
Doing the tough things sets winners apart from losers.
— Stephen Richards, Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful
Hapiness is as exclusive as a butterfly, and you must never pursue it. If you stay very still, it may come and settle on your hand. But only briefly. Savour those moments, for they will not come in your way very often.
— Ruskin Bond, A Little Book of Life
If one has failed to develop curiosity and interest in the early years, it is a good idea to acquire them now, before it is too late to improve the quality of life. To do so is fairly easy in principle, but more difficult in practice. Yet it is sure worth trying. The first step is to develop the habit of doing whatever needs to be done with concentrated attention, with skill rather than inertia. Even the most routine tasks, like washing dishes, dressing, or mowing the lawn become more rewarding if we approach them with the care it would take to make a work of art. The next step is to transfer some psychic energy each day from tasks that we don’t like doing, or from passive leisure, into something we never did before, or something we enjoy doing but don’t do often enough because it seems too much trouble. There are literally millions of potentially interesting things in the world to see, to do, to learn about. But they don’t become actually interesting until we devote attention to them.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life
Each new friend gives rise to the possibility of anything!
— Stephen Richards
If you think you can then you can.
— Stephen Richards
Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that wemake happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
When you know love then that is the time you forget hate.
— Stephen Richards
Doing what you love is freedom. Loving what you do is happiness.
— Lana Del Rey
Always remember that you were once alone, and the crowd you see in your life today are just as unecessary as when you were alone.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
...nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment.
— Nicholas Sparks, Safe Haven
Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.
— George Washington
Happiness is a state of activity.
— Aristotle
If everything really does get better, the way everyone claims, then happiness should be graphable. But that's crap, because better isn't quantifiable.
— Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything
I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.
— Sarah Addison Allen
I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!
— Jean Anouilh, Antigone
No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.
— Colette
I'm a happy person. If you want to be around me, you can either choose to be happy too, or follow the signs to the nearest exit!
— Sharon Swan
We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing -- half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
We've got everything we need right here, and everything we need is enough.
— Jack Johnson
But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.''In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.''Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. 'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome," he said.
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Sometimes when I meet old friends, it reminds me how quickly time passes. And it makes me wonder if we've utilized our time properly or not. Proper utilization of time is so important. While we have this body, and especially this amazing human brain, I think every minute is something precious. Our day-to-day existence is very much alive with hope, although there is no guarantee of our future. There is no guarantee that tomorrow at this time we will be here. But we are working for that purely on the basis of hope. So, we need to make the best use of our time. I believe that the proper utilization of time is this: if you can, serve other people, other sentient beings. If not, at least refrain from harming them. I think that is the whole basis of my philosophy.So, let us reflect what is truly of value in life, what gives meaning to our lives, and set our priorities on the basis of that. The purpose of our life needs to be positive. We weren't born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others. For our life to be of value, I think we must develop basic good human qualities—warmth, kindness, compassion. Then our life becomes meaningful and more peaceful—happier.
— Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness
For the likes of you, the path to happiness is one mean son of a bitch of a path.
— Dean Koontz, Dead and Alive
Indeed there has never been any explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins--of happiness and unhappiness.
— Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can’t change.
— Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness
and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter
— Charles Bukowski
It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.
— George Saunders, Tenth of December
Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.
— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.
— David Benioff, When the Nines Roll Over and Other Stories
No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.
— Dean Koontz, Life Expectancy
If you're not making someone else's life better, then you're wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.
— Will Smith
I've pursued dreams and achieved them, but I don't think anybody should think their life is incomplete if they don't follow some dream. Happiness doesn't come from achievements, or money, or any sort of treasure. Happiness is a frame of mind, not a destination. It's appreciating what you've got and building relationships with those around you.
— Janette Rallison
Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.
— Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.
— Bertrand Russell
There is no greater power than that of a laugh and happiness is a force which can save a person from the horrors of the world.
— Hillary DePiano, The Love of Three Oranges: A Play for the Theatre That Takes the Commedia Dell'arte of Carlo Gozzi and Updates It for the New Millennium
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights
Life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The thing everyone should realize is that the key to happiness is being happy by yourself and for yourself. Happiness comes from within. You have the power to change your own mindset so that all the negative, horrible thoughts that try to invade your psyche are replaced with happy, positive, wonderful thoughts.
— Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding
I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.
— S.J. Watson, Before I Go to Sleep
Today only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist; but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment.
— Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees
People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition
The dead don't desire revenge, but the happiness of the livng. To dirty your small hands would bring joy to no one.-Kenshin to Eiji
— Nobuhiro Watsuki
Start with big dreams and make life worth living.
— Stephen Richards
Vipassana meditation is an ongoing creative purification process. Observation of the moment-to-moment experience cleanses the mental layers, one after another.
— Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style
The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. 
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
I'm living a dream I never want to wake up from.
— Cristiano Ronaldo
Love is the energy of life.
— Robert Browning
When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leafto turn away from the sun -- it loves it there.There's nothing so spiritual about being happybut you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.
— Frank O'Hara
We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.
— Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
The point of simple living, for me has got to be:A soft place to landA wide margin of errorRoom to breatheLots of places to find baseline happiness in each and every day
— Leo Babauta
He was a wonderful man. And when a man is that special, you know it sooner than you think possible. You recognize it instinctively, and you're certain that no matter what happens, there will never be another one like him.
— Nicholas Sparks
I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.Brian Sibley: Or brains even?Oh gosh, yes, brains is one of the least. You can be a lovely person without brains, absolutely lovely. Kindness - that simple word. To be kind - it covers everything, to my mind.If you're kind that's it.
— Roald Dahl
We are all happy if we but knew it.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.
— Sarah Addison Allen
At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.
— Benjamin J. Carey, Barefoot in November
I've learned .... That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.
— Andy Rooney
You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.
— Andy Warhol
Let today be the day you finally release yourself from the imprisonment of past grudges and anger. Simplify your life. Let go of the poisonous past and live the abundantly beautiful present... today.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
[Happiness is] a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.
— Eric    Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Marriage is just a piece of paper if it's not a happy one.
— Phil Lester
The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. 
— Dan Savage, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America
There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.
— André Gide, The Immoralist
Suffering is due to our disconnection with the inner soul. Meditation is establishing that connection.
— Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations
If you write it down, you can make it happen.
— Staness Jonekos
Unless you know where you are going then you will not know how to get there.
— Stephen Richards
I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?
— Epictetus
But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected."I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes—when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables—when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had—when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -Anne
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
Relationships: If you put up with it, you’re going to end up with it. Set the standard you want and don’t settle for less.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.
— Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.
— Albert Camus, The Fall
Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them.
— Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious.
— Will Rogers
The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
I don't want to be the one who says life is beautiful. I want to be the one who feels it.
— Marty Rubin
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Happy the man, and happy he alone,he who can call today his own:he who, secure within, can say,Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.Be fair or foul, or rain or shinethe joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.Not Heaven itself, upon the past has power,but what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
— Horace
Love and compassion are the mother and father of a smile. We need to create more smiles in our world today. Smiles, after all, pave the way to a happy world.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Maybe if we stopped trying to achieve movie standards of greatness, we'd be happy with what we have.
— Amber L.  Johnson, Puddle Jumping
What good is money if it can't buy happiness?
— Agatha Christie, The Man in the Brown Suit
We are a noisy and blessed little family
— Nancy E. Turner, These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes
— Bertolt Brecht, Galileo
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers.
— Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
She avoids deep thought like an empty restaurant, not out of stupidity, but a canny resolve to be happy.
— Alex Shakar, Luminarium
The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.
— Jean de La Bruyère
Life is so short. The only person you hurt when you stay angry or hold grudges is you. Forgive everyone, including yourself.
— Tom Giaquinto
when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
...The world is full of happy people but no one ever hears of them. You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers. No one knows about all the happy people...
— Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
I wanted color. I wanted to soar with happiness even if it meant dealing with the weight of fear and guilt, too. I wanted to live.
— Heather Anastasiu, Glitch
I think we go well together. I like being with you because I'm never bored. Even when we're not talking, even when we're not touching, even when we're not in the same room, I'm not bored. I'm never bored. I think it's because I have confidence in you, in your thoughts. Do you understand? I love everything I see in you, and everything I don't see. I know your faults, but as it turns out, I feel as though your faults go well with my qualities. We're not afraid of the same things. Even our inner demons go well together! You, you're worth more than you show...
— Anna Gavalda, Someone I Loved
Dads. It’s time to show our sons how to properly treat a woman. It’s time to show our daughters how a girl should expect be treated. It’s time to show forgiveness and compassion. It’s time to show our children empathy. It’s time to break social norms and teach a healthier way of life! It’s time to teach good gender roles and to ditch the unnecessary ones. Does it really matter if your son likes the color pink? Is it going to hurt anybody? Do you not see the damage it inflicts to tell a boy that there is something wrong with him because he likes a certain color? Do we not see the damage we do in labeling our girls “tom boys” or our boys “feminine” just because they have their own likes and opinions on things? Things that really don’t matter?
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.
— Oscar Wilde
Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
— Walt Whitman
There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations
— Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
When she absently worried her bottom lip with one of her adorable little fangs, he sighed..Dear gods, it’d finally happened to him.Happiness.Then his own fangs sharpened.I will kill anyone who tries to take this feeling away from me.
— Kresley Cole, Lothaire
Are you going to allow the world around you to change while you remain stagnant? Make this the time you throw away old habits that have hindered your happiness and success and finally allow your greatest self to flourish.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Life itself is simple...it's just not easy.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.
— Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
De pronto tuve conciencia de que ese momento, de que esa rebanada de cotidianidad, era el grado máximo de bienestar, era la Dicha. Nunca había sido tan plenamente feliz como en ese momento, pero tenía la hiriente sensación de que nunca más volvería a serlo, por lo menos en ese grado, con esa intensidad
— Mario Benedetti, La tregua
Your life begins to change the day you take responsibility for it.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
To be happy--one must find one's bliss
— Gloria Vanderbilt
Money can't buy happiness, but it certainly is a stress reliever.
— Besa Kosova
Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.
— Deepak Chopra
What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
— Thomas Bailey Aldrich
I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.
— David Brooks
All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
— Samuel Butler
Be Sure To Notice When You're Happy
— Brenda Farrar-ejemai
Sometimes pain is so unmanageable that the idea of spending another day with it seems impossible. Other times pain acts as a compass to help you get through the messier tunnels of growing up. But the pain can only help you find happiness if you can remember it.
— Adam Silvera, More Happy Than Not
A woman's happiness is in throwing everything away to live for love.
— Ai Yazawa, Paradise Kiss, Vol. 5
To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
You are an ocean in a drop of dew,all the universes in a thin sack of blood.What are these pleasures then,these joys, these worldsthat you keep reaching for,hoping they will make you more alive?
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.
— Andy Warhol
Hearts will break and people will hurt you, darling.” Her mother said. “But when you let those people control your outlook on the life, you only allow them to have a greater hold on your happiness. Once you accept the fact that every day is a new day to begin again, life becomes a much easier path to walk.
— Courtney Giardina, Holding on to Georgia
Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.
— Bob Marley
She was happy, yes, in her own way, as best as she knew.But there’s a difference between a single candle in darkness and a sunrise.
— Victoria Aveyard, Queen Song
A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend.
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.
— François de La Rochefoucauld
Recognizing that you are not where you want to be is a starting point to begin changing your life.
— Deborah Day
Science of happiness lies in our understanding. The secrets of happiness lie in our capacity to expand our heart.
— Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style
The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.
— J.M. Coetzee
Leave behind the passive dreaming of a rose-tinted future. The energy of happiness exists in living today with roots sunk firmly in reality's soil.
— Daisaku Ikeda
God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any, or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.
— Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 17: Sermons and Discourses, 1730-1733
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
— Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.
— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Are you happy?
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
When you find yourself in need of spiritual nourishment, it is in the opportunities to serve others that you will find the abundance you seek.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Finding happiness should not be seen as finding a needle in a haystack. Happiness is within. Each day is a blessing that brings an abundance of happiness. Therefore, finding happiness should be like finding a gift in a stack of gifts.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body’s extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs. Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases!
— Patch Adams
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.
— George Bernard Shaw, Misalliance
Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn't notice.
— Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
I was happy anywhere I could see the ocean.
— Ai Yazawa, Nana, Vol. 18
Cheer up and dry your damp eyes,And tell me when it rains,And I'll blend up that rainbow above you & shoot it through your veins...'Cause your heart has a lack of color,And we should've known That we'd grow up sooner or later,'Cause we wasted all our free time alone. <3
— Owl City
It is my observations, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
— Nikos Kazantzakis
It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.
— Orson Scott Card, Shadow Puppets
We can't be so desperate for love that we forget where we can always find it
—  within.
I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air. or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
— Willa Cather, My Antonia
You don't have to be part of a couple to be happy, you know.
— Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Alice Alone
An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is always possible to be happy.
— Augustine Birrell
The business of being happy requires making a conscious choice. People think being happy will just happen to them someday, if only they do this or that right. But it doesn't - you have to choose it. You choose happiness, you don't wait for it to choose you.
— Bethenny Frankel, A Place of Yes: 10 Rules for Getting Everything You Want Out of Life
A piece of happiness should never be taken as due.
— Charlaine Harris, Dead to the World
Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.
— Stef Penney, The Tenderness of Wolves
She laughed. 'It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.''Happy,' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception--especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
I promise you that the same stuff galaxies are made of, you are. The same energy that swings planets around stars makes electrons dance in your heart. It is in you, outside you, you are it. It is beautiful. Trust in this. And you your life will be grand.
— Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth
Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment. Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they've spent their lives following other people's demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?
— Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
Happiness is the most tired word in any language.
— Erol Ozan
Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.
— Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
— William Saroyan, My Heart's in the Highlands
Sky is not a limit for me
—  because I have no limit for myself in life. Because life is a world full of risk taking and possibilities. No matter how hard or easy life is
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,One clover, and a bee,And revery.The revery alone will do,If bees are few.
— Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
— Margaret Lee Runbeck
A grateful mindset can set you free from the prison of disempowerment and the shackles of misery.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Success is getting what you want
—  happiness is wanting what you get.
IN THE HANDS OF MANHe who creates a poison, also has the cure.He who creates a virus, also has the antidote.He who creates chaos, also has the ability to create peace.He who sparks hate, also has the ability to transform it to love.He who creates misery, also has the ability to destroy it with kindness.He who creates sadness, also has the ability to to covert it to happiness.He who creates darkness, can also be awakened to produce illumination.He who spreads fear, can also be shaken to spread comfort.Any problems created by the left hand of man,Can also be solved with the right,For he who manifests anything,Also has the ability toDestroy it.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Good morning, Hell-A. In the land of the lotus-eaters, time plays tricks on you. One day you’re dreaming, the next, your dream has become your reality. It was the best of times. If only someone had told me. Mistakes were made, hearts were broken, harsh lessons learned. My family goes on without me, while I drown in a sea of pointless pussy. I don’t know how I got here. But here I am, rotting away in the warm California sun. There are things I need to figure out, for her sake, at least. The clock is ticking. The gap is widening. She won’t always love me “no matter what
— Hank Moody
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.
— John C. Maxwell, Your Road Map for Success: You Can Get There from Here
You must remember this feeling, Jon.The feeling of being happy. It doesn't happen often but when it does, you must grab it with both hands and hold it close. Let it overwhelm you. Don'tover analyse any emotion. But remember it. Always remember it.
— pleasefindthis, Intentional Dissonance
She felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. Afterward she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it. Now, however, she knows she wasn't being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It's a rare gift to under stand that you life is wondrous, and that it won't last forever. 
— Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo
Stay away from conflictive, negative people that pull you down, because they contaminate your energy and impede your progress. Search for people who look at the world with optimism, that inspire you, make you happy and provide peace of mind.
— Pablo
I believe there is a kind of happiness to be found in every thing in life, in all that is good and pleasing, as well as in that which is sad or poignant.
— Syrie James, The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen
In pursuit of happiness, smart people often end up dumbing down themselves.
— Erol Ozan
Love, I thought to myself abstractedly. Not 'This is love' or 'Is this love?' Not a sentence, not a certainty, not a thought with moving parts or direction. Just love, all of it, as it is. Whether it's enough or not. Wthether it's real or we're making it up. However shoddy it gets, or bent out of shape. It's still extraordinary. However foolish, however vain. However badly it ends. Love.
— Julian Gough, Juno & Juliet
Once people said: Give me liberty or give me death. Now they say: Make me a slave, just pay me enough.
— Todd Garlington
Suffering just means you’re having a bad dream. Happiness means you’re having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.
— Jed McKenna
I do not care about happiness simply because I believe that joy is something worth fighting for.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
The decision is mine, and I choose happiness
— Malori Howell
But, like all happiness, it did not last long…
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Lord, make me nowAs happy as the field.With flowers enriched...
— Eileen A. Soper
The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.
— Shannon L. Alder
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
— Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams
Action may not always bring happiness
—  but there is no happiness without action.
Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.
— Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story
At any given moment the choice to be happy is present- we just have to choose to be happy.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
I believe that being happy is the only important thing. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or torturous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
— Joanne Harris
Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think. So start each day by thinking of all the things you have to be thankful for. Your future will depend very largely on the thoughts you think today. So think thoughts of hope and confidence and love and success.
— Dale Carnegie
Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves.
— Slavoj Žižek
I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.
— Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
and we laugh and laugh andall I know isat this moment I feel likeI can do anything I wantand be anyone I wantand go anywhere on the globeand still call it home
— Kirsten Smith, The Geography of Girlhood
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The value of a moment is immeasurable. The power of just ONE moment can propel you to success and happiness or chain you to failure and misery.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Happily Single" is recognizing that you don’t need or want to be rescued from your life by a handsome prince because your life is pretty awesome, as is.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory
—  you won't see it often.
Work harder to appreciate your ordinary day.
— Gretchen Rubin