c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing.
— Dan Buettner, Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way
Be like a branch of a tree
—  flex your body to face 'wind of sorrow'
I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
— Jane Austen, Emma
Expect more get less and feel sadness Or expect less get more and feel happiness
— Vijay Dhameliya
If life throws you a few bad notes or vibrations, don't let them interrupt or alter your song.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
that's exactly the good thing about the Injun life--you don't have to stop and think about whether or not you're 'happy'--which in my opinionis a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks
— Jim Fergus, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
Nothing that happens to you was meant to be. The only thing about you that was meant to be is you. Blaze your own trail.
— George Alexiou
We left behind the other kids; their path-working, drinking, and being grown up- and rejected all that made them grumpy, uncreative and lifeless. We dumpstered, squatted, and shoplifted our lives back. Everything fell into place when we decided our lives were meant to be lived. Life serves the risk taker...
— CrimethInc., Evasion
Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life
Once he said to her: 'You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it.
— Hermann Hesse
Your most important “want” should be the one you can control!
— Shannon L. Alder
Why do I want to run from happiness?
— Mary Balogh, More Than a Mistress
A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing or to love the right person or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded.
— Thomas Lewis, A General Theory of Love
His gut was stitched up good and tight, but that didn’t prevent it from flopping. He wiped his damp palms on the legs of his jeans and stood up shakily, leaning heavily on his cane.He called himself a masochist for putting himself through this torture day after day.He braced himself for the disappointment of having to go home alone.He braced himself for happiness like he’d never known in his entire life.He watched the door they would come through.
— Sandra Brown, Lethal
Happiness is a good business these days, more you talk crap about happiness the large number of crowd you will gather.
— Santosh Kalwar
Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
— Helen Keller
How to win in life:1 work hard 2 complain less 3 listen more 4 try, learn, grow5 don't let people tell you it cant be done6 make no excuses
— Germany Kent
The happiness of a family is such a complex matter. Like a table laid out with a tea service, it looks so ordinary until it's threatened. Then it becomes infinitely precious.
— Lynda Williams, Holy war
Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Thing
A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground
—  its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?
Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.
— Heather O'Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals
When we give up the chase, we give up our wishing.
— Stephen Richards
What would it be like to look in the mirror and actually accept what you see? Not loathe the reflection, or despise it, or be resigned to it? But to like it?
— Justina Chen, North of Beautiful
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
When we lose our spiritual child then that is when we have grown old.
— Stephen Richards
She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears.
— Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom.
— Lauren Oliver, Delirium
Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore happiness and cleave unto joy! Now, now, let's not sugar-coat things! Lust has a lot more to do with life and what is the good of life if you do not carry much lust inside of you at all times? And joy is a noble thing, but happiness though fleeting can be found every day and in every small little way!
— C. JoyBell C.
Why sadness was created?So we could rest from laughing.
— Nelson M. Lubao
The man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life.
— Euripides
If you stay in the company of anger, pain, or hurt, happiness will find someone else to visit. Make the choice to view all of your past relationships as a gift. Throw out what hasn’t worked in the past and incorporate new concepts. Focus on being happy﻿.
— Kristen Crockett, The Gift of Past Relationships
I took the dog out for a walk tonight, and together we wandered across the meadow next door. It was a warm summer's night, dark, and moonless. There were a handful of fireflies flickering intermittently, some so close to me I could see they were burning green as they flew, and some further away, who seemed to be flashing white.And in the sky above them a continual roil of distant summer lightning (the storm distant enough that it was silent) burned and flashed and illuminated the clouds. It seemed as if the lightning bugs were talking to the lightning, in a perfect call and response of flash and counterflash. I watched the sky and the meadow flash and flash while the dog walked ahead of me, and realised that I was perfectly happy...
— Neil Gaiman
How can I tell Bob that my happiness streams from having wrenched a piece out of my life, a piece of hurt and beauty, and transformed it to typewritten words on paper? How can he know I am justifying my life, my keen emotions, my feeling, by turning it into print?
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.
— Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
If you really want to be happy, don't just go for the money. Go for the relationship that lasts. Go for things of greater value.
— Tony Meloto (Your First Job by: N. Dy)
I was terrified of my weakness, of my sharp tongue, ofmy every flaw. I was terrified that this moment, my chance tolive in happiness for however short a time we may have had,would be ruined because I was simply not carved out of thesame wood as happiness, and that my grain was too twistedto ever take its form.
— Amy Lane, Truth in the Dark
It is not where we are that matters nor what we have, it is what we do with where we are and what we have.
— Sonia Rumzi
The secret of happiness is something to do
— John Burroughs
Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
And Nedley started saying,'Shut Up!Quit that! And i knew it really meant something to him. So I asked for his help,"Mark said. "Don't tell the story like that," Nedley laughed. "What he said was 'Quit pretendin you're a bad guy I need your help, and I need it now!
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Among the Brave
For a woman to deny the necessity of true love in her life would be to deny herself, and her creator.
— Dwain K. White Sr., Every Woman's Dream
I want to be careful not to throw all this away. This is happiness. I think this is what happiness is. I haven't got it yet, but I can sense it out there. I feel I'm close to it. Some days, I'm so close I can almost smell it.
— Sebastian Faulks, Engleby
I have been poisoned in your love and now I need antidote Jacqueline.L.J! <3
— Omaid olovejlj Zazai
Happiness. It comes onunexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,any early morning talk about it.
— Raymond Carver
Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you.Have you given much thought to our mortal condition?Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen.There's no one alivewho can say if he will be tomorrow.Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery.No one can teach it, no one can grasp it.Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink!You can let the rest go. Am I making sense?I think so. How about a drink.Put on a garland. I'm surethe happy splash of wine will cure your mood.We're all mortal you know. Think mortal.Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life,
— Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
Even the smallest shift in perspective can bring about the greatest healing.
— Joshua Kai, The Quantum Prayer: An Inspiring Guide to Love, Healing, and Creating the Best Life Possible
It's hard to say. Sometimes people have had terrible childhoods. And sometimes they just haven't found their special place in life. And sometimes they're dogs from hell and must be destroyed.
— Charles Addams
It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness--however temporary, however flimsy--of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another.
— Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness
Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement.
— Neal Shusterman, Bruiser
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
— George Bernard Shaw
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
— Ivan Turgenev
Children must early learn the the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving.
— Charles Alexander Eastman
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. 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. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?
— Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
Christopher McCandless:"I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things.
— Shunryu Suzuki
We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate eachother or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life's healthy needs.
— Wilhelm Reich, Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology
Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.
— Carol Shields, Unless
Nurturing, Providing, and loving you passionately. May that be, my number of responsibilities. As one to the end, forever more. That's how long I desire, our love to last for. Providing for you many and joyful memories. In hours of darkness, as well as brightness. I plan to supply for you. For your love for me and happiness, is all that matters to me.
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable
We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of on good rain and black loam.
— Ray Bradbury
Raise you awareness and share your uniqueness to the world.
— Amit Ray, Enlightenment Step by Step
It is too late for me to learn your wisdom in this matter. From the time I knew aught, I have lived with a knight and his lady whose love lit and warmed the dark hall on winter's nights. Madam, my example comes not from any book of romance. My grandparents walked and breathed; they kissed and quarreled. This I must have, and I will seek it with the point of my knife in a bad husband's heart if I can find it no other way.
— Roberta Gellis
Joy is distinctly a Christian word and a Christian thing. It is the reverse of happiness. Happiness is the result of what happens of an agreeable sort. Joy has its spring deep down inside. And that spring never runs dry, no matter what happens. Only Jesus gives that joy.
— Samuel Gordon
Reading messed with my brain in an unaccountable way. It made me happy
—  or something.
I'm generally a happy person -with the help of antidepressants, that is- so there is something to be said for surrounding myself with happy people.
— Rachel Machacek, The Science of Single: One Woman's Grand Experiment in Modern Dating, Creating Chemistry, and Finding Love
It was a pity that people did not risk enough to speak out in behalf of one another's happiness and their own.
— Louis Zukofsky, Collected Fiction
Through strength I found loveIn time I found myself in happiness with you
— Alexis Jordan
As I watch him, a sudden recognition comes over me: Tonight, I can be anyone I want… maybe being happy only means living in the moment, appreciating the exact moment you're in and not thinking about the worries of the future.
— Laura Fitzgerald, Veil of Roses
I know how syrupy this sounds, how dull, provincial, and possibly whitewashed, but what can I do? Happy childhoods happen
— Marisa de los Santos, Belong to Me
People expected something for nothing, that’s why they did nothing so beautifully these days.
— Holly Hood, Prison of Paradise
Respect? Of course, always, to all, because everything seems funnier when you're trying to show respect.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness
— Leo Tolstoy
Many of us seem to live our lives looking for happiness. That is not always a bad thing, but it can be if we continually believe that happiness is someplace else and not in the present.
— Barbara Barrington Jones
Happy people produce. Bored people consume.
— Stephen Richards
No matter how small you start, always dream big.
— Stephen Richards
No beating yourself up. That’s not allowed. Be patient with yourself. It took you years to form the bad habits of thought that you no longer want. It will take a littletime to form new and better ones. But I promise you this: Even a slight move in this direction will bring you some peace. The more effort you apply to it, the faster you’ll find your bliss, but you’ll experience rewards immediately.
— Holly Mosier
All that you are is all around you.
— Stephen Richards
Without friends you have nothing!
— Stephen Richards
The true test of one's mettle is how many times you will try before you give up.
— Stephen Richards
Even when in the midst of disturbance, the stillness of the mind can offer sanctuary.
— Stephen Richards, The Ultimate Cosmic Ordering Meditation
Don’t we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be… doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.It has everything to do with being a good human being. A good person. A good friend.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Keep in mind that the reason you know you can be good to others is only because you've taken strides to be better for and to yourself.
— Alexandra Elle, Words from a Wanderer
To embark on the journey towards your goals and dreams requires bravery. To remain on that path requires courage. The bridge that merges the two is commitment.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Don't nourish your fears more than you nourish your hopes.
— Steve Maraboli
Separate yourself from those who hinder your vision. Make a choice to walk away from the trap set to ensnare you. Realize when someone is pulling you backwards every time you take a step forward. Separate from them and the result of your action will be a life of success.
— Amaka Imani Nkosazana
If the sun is shining, stand in it- yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass- they have to- because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred. What you are pursuing is meaning- a meaningful life... There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Nos-tal-gic,’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ‘nostalgic.’ ‘Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.’‘Really, old fellow?’‘Important. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.’He fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble.‘Akira,’ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. ‘We should move on. We have much to do.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
It is sad that people need alcohol to make them happy.
— Habeeb Akande
Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
— Yongey Mingyur, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value, and behaving in a way that’s consistent with those beliefs.
— Mike Rowe
The more death, the more birth. People are entering, others are exiting. The cry of a baby, the mourning of others. When others cry, the other are laughing and making merry. The world is mingled with sadness, joy, happiness, anger, wealth, poverty, etc.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
I neither knew nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic; but was determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost.
— H.P. Lovecraft
As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delights of presence best known by the torments of absence.
— Alcibiades
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness... but only when you pay your taxes? That means your freedom is rented, leased, & not unalienable.
— Steve Maraboli
Here, also, the future was cried aloud by the wind through the rocks, so that all those who heard would shiver, and then the liquid spring song of the thrush would make all the beauty of moonlight and sunlight blend together, making it true, so true, that happiness must come again
— Elyne Mitchell, Moon Filly
A FriendSomeoneYou're happy to see,Who's happy to see you.SomeoneYou like for who they areNot just for what they can do for you.
— Nancy J. Cavanaugh, This Journal Belongs to Ratchet
Everyone knew as much as they needed to know to be happy.
— Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth
Merry hearts are vulnerable to death, don't be over-joyed to the state of oblivion, lest the enemy poison your meal.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
The years lay spread out before her, spacious untouched canvases on which she was presently going to paint the picture of her life. It was to be a very beautiful picture, she said to herself with an extraordinary feeling of proud confidence; not beautiful because of any gifts or skill of hers, for never was a woman more giftless, but because of all the untiring little touches, the ceaseless care for detail, the patient painting out of mistakes; and every touch and every detail was going to be aglow with the bright colours of happiness.
— Elizabeth von Arnim, The Pastor's Wife
Give Happiness, Patience, kindness, and Care, and the PAIN goes away.Then only LOVE remains...
— Tsem Tulku Rinpoche, 108 Ways to Grab My Apples
It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt. But on an occasion such as this it was different, for the spirit of convention was being rigorously adhered to, and in between his ribs Mr. Flay experienced twinges of pleasure.
— Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come--as though that time should be of another make from this which has already come and is ours.
— Thomas Fuller
She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
We were all born equal, but where we are in life now is of our own making.
— Stephen Richards
I like how Mother Teresa put it: "Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile." If you approach life this way, always looking for ways to build instead of to tear down, you'll be amazed at how much happiness you can give to others and find for yourself
— Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide
I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
There is a difference between talented people and gifted people.Talented people are good AT something
—  Gifted people ARE that something.
I willingly allow that money does not guarantee happiness
—  but it must also be allowed that it makes happiness a great deal easier to achieve.
The good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job.
— Lionel Shriver
If you can channel the best part of you that is bigger than yourself, where it’s not about your ego and not about getting ahead, then you can have fun and you aren’t jealous of others. You see other people's talent as another branch of your own. You can keep it rooted in joy. Life is long and there are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. The point of it all is to learn.
— Ethan Hawke
Happiness is the highest form of self-respect. A person who allows himself to be happy shows his self-respect.
— Maery Rubin
Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)
— Peter S. Beagle, We Never Talk about My Brother
For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?
— Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys
I had decided to stop chasing the money, and start chasing the passion.
— Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Get out of your own way… stop the paralysis by analysis… decide what you want, create a simple plan, and get moving!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Wanna be always Happy? Always carry some chocolate with you 
— )
The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. Your have to catch up with it yourself.
— Benjamin Franklin
And though I was currently living a fairy tale, some part of my soul knew that happiness couldn't last forever. I didn't deserve a happily ever after, and there weren't many other cards to play when that was the truth.
— Alysha Speer, Sharden
You can enjoy a deep sense of satisfaction and happiness in life despite challenging circumstances. It's all in how you think about it.
— Kristi Bowman
Happiness never made anyone rich or famous. That must be why ambitious people avoid it.
— Marty Rubin
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.
— George Santayana
People with the most interests live, not only longest, but happiest.
— George Matthew Allen
We were so happy.
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
No man should ever completely realize his dreams. What else would there then be to live for?
— David Gemmell, Lion of Macedon
You know, when you're unhappy you don't have the strength left to take care of others. But it doesn't mean you don't love them.
— Francesca Marciano, Casa Rossa
Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world.
— William Lyon Phelps
The disempowered mind believes dreams come true
—  the empowered mind knows you bring your dreams to life.
It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;Thyself from thine affectionTakest warmth enough, and from thine eyeAll lesser birds will take their jollity.Up, up, fair bride, and callThy stars from out their several boxes, takeThy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and makeThyself a constellation of them all;And by their blazing signifyThat a great princess falls, but doth not die.Be thou a new star, that to us portendsEnds of much wonder; and be thou those ends.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
Ivan tells Anna: "I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman . . . as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing . . . [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else.
— Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows
Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.
— Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening ...
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
...anticipation of happiness can sometimes be as gratifying as its consummation.
— Gaynor Arnold, Girl in a Blue Dress
Give more, so that we can build more, put interest in understanding another more in whatever actions one might carry out in life. Because we all are fighting for survival against adversaries and are sometimes falling, but if we stand together and help shield and strengthen one another, imagine the world that we will live in together, having more happiness with one another, at one another’s side.
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated
Fate is the malevolent little jester sitting up in the heavens and pondering over how ridiculous we humans are and he does his best to make fools out of all of us. And sooner or later he succeeds.
— Lisa Kleypas, Forever My Love
Sometimes customizing is necessary because of an injury or the inability to do, for a short or long period, the kind of exercise you formerly did. When you're used to customizing for fun, doing it under duress won't seem like such an imposition. Either way, experiment until you find activities that make you happy as well as healthy. Choose your exercise using the same criteria you'd apply to choosing a date--that is, attractive to you and able to hold your interest for an hour.
— Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit
Some nonreligious people are disgruntled by the word "faith," feeling that it has no connection to them. But we all have faith. Broadly speaking, "faith" does not apply only to belief in the supernatural. We have faith in our life, for example, believing we will live to see tomorrow, or in our health, believing we have years of healthy life ahead of us. Husbands and wives, parents and children have faith in one another.
— Kentetsu Takamori, Unlocking Tannisho: Shinran's Words on the Pure Land Path
It's lovely to see people so happy.
— Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.
— Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin
..Such practices and beliefs, which interfere with happiness, are neither inevitable nor necessary; they evolved by chance, as a result of random responses to accidental conditions. But once they become part of the norms and habits of a culture, people assume that this is how things must be; they come to believe they have no other options.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
Cynicism is the calling card of unhappy people.
— Iimani David
Mankind were intended to be happy... that government being only the means of securing freedom and happiness to the people, whenever it deviates from this end, and their freedom and happiness are in great danger of being irrevocably lost, the government is no longer entitled to their allegiance. ("The Principles of an American Whig"-1777)
— Jamie Iredell
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. 
— Douglas William Jerrold
Outside, she thought that there ought to be a word for it: the air temperature that was perfectly neither hot nor cold. One degree lower, and she might have felt a faint misgiving about not having brought a jacket. One degree higher, and a skim of sweat might have glistened at her hairline. But at this precise degree, she required neither wrap nor breeze. Were there a word for such a temperature, there would have to be a corollary for the particular ecstasy of greeting it - the heedlessness, the needlessness, the suspended lack of urgency, as if time could stop, or should. Usually temperature was a battle; only at this exact fulcrum was it an active delight.
— Lionel Shriver, The Post-Birthday World
The first sure symptom of a mind in health Is rest of heart and pleasure felt at home.
— Edward Young
How to Find Your Joylah1. Try new things2. Be open to new friends3. Visit new places4. Listen to new ideas5. Remember each day is a new day6. And it's really no big deal if beads get mixed up every once in a while
— Elizabeth    Atkinson, I, Emma Freke
I did, of course, on both counts, and started going out with the boy I lost my virginity to - all of it. He lost his to me too, except that neither of us felt we had lost anything - just discovered the meaning of life and love and everything else unnecessary in between.
— Elly Varrenti, This is Not My Beautiful Life: Love, Happiness and Other Great Expectations
Es dauerte einen Moment, bis er ihr antwortete:Nein, ich spreche von... von eurer Freiheit, glaube ich. Von dem Glück, das ihr habt, für euch zu leben und auf alles andere zu pfeifen.
— Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering
She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him.
— David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Happiness is the feeling we experience when we are too busy to be miserable.
— Thomas L. Masson
I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun.
— Robert Rauschenberg
I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,' said Diana, 'during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the passage expecting you - he will make it up.'I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him - he stood at the foot of the stairs.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all.But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.
— Lauren Oliver, Requiem
Dads. Do you not realize that a child is what you tell them they are? That people almost always become what they are labeled? Was whatever your child just did really the “dumbest thing you’ve ever seen somebody do”? Was it really the “most ridiculous thing they ever could have done”? Do you really believe that your child is an idiot? Because she now does. Think about that. Because you said it, she now believes it. Bravo.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Dads. It’s time to tell our kids that we love them. Constantly. It’s time to show our kids that we love them. Constantly. It’s time to take joy in their twenty-thousand daily questions and their inability to do things as quickly as we’d like. It’s time to take joy in their quirks and their ticks. It’s time to take joy in their facial expressions and their mispronounced words. It’s time to take joy in everything that our kids are.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it.
— Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
My scars tell a story. They are a reminder of times when life tried to break me, but failed. They are markings of where the structure of my character was welded.
— Steve Maraboli
so many thoughts, my kvothe. you know too much to be happy.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
At any given moment, your circumstances can change. You may not be where you want to be right now. You may not even be doing what you prefer to do. But, if you change your way of thinking and realize that you have all the opportunities available to you just like each one of us. You can begin to focus on what you want to achieve and make it happen
— Amaka Imani Nkosazana
To sense the peace of extinguished passionHappiness in not knowing the ultimate knowledge
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sign and Its Children
But 'tis a sad thing that all one's happiness is only that the world does not know you are miserable.
— Dorothy Osborne, Letters to Sir William Temple
But there was, she knew, something else. Happiness, she supposed. Whatever that might be. What, exactly, she wondered, was happiness. Very positively she wanted it.
— Nella Larsen, Quicksand
According to the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville: The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.
— Matthieu Ricard
The face of a truly happy man seldom lacks smiles.
— Ogwo David Emenike, Happiness Recipe: Eat and Stay Happy
Some people are like a thermometer. If their environment is negative, they are negative. If bad things happen, they are sad. If good things happen, they are happy. They are simply a product of their environment. Successful people, on the other hand, are more like a thermostat. Even if their environment is negative, they choose to be positive.
— Cameron C. Taylor, 8 Attributes of Great Achievers
Je tiefer sich das Leid in euer Sein eingräbt, desto mehr Freude könnt ihr fassen.
— Kahlil Gibran
Always be happy, you never know how happy you can make another by just being happy.
— Ogwo David Emenike, Happiness Recipe: Eat and Stay Happy
Happiness springs up from within. Do not seek it without.
— Ogwo David Emenike, Happiness Recipe: Eat and Stay Happy
No matter how much someone else loves you or you love other people, if you don’t love yourself then it can never be enough.
— Shannon Kaiser
Jealous of the crazy gay kid. That doesn't sound right.""Hey, Sol," she said, her tone getting serious for a second. "Those are two things about you out of a million. Don't box yourself in.
— John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior
Thoughts are just thoughts, and they can’t hurt you. My thoughts land in my mind like a butterfly; they stay for a while, then flutter away. The butterfly isn’t me. I can step away from it, and watch it, learn from it, enjoy it, without needing to absorb it into my identity.
— Julie Farrell
Love your life. That's a direct route to something people used to call "happiness".
— Clementine Holzinger, EL32
There are few nicer things than sitting up in bed, drinking strong tea, and reading.
— Alan Clark
You know what Marshall needs to do. He needs to stop being sad. When I get sad, I stop being sad, and be awesome instead. True story.
— Barney Stinson
Don’t dare to dream big, just dream BIG!
— Stephen Richards
There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
If we lose all of our wealth and are only left with love then, indeed, we shall never be poor.
— Stephen Richards
Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted upon pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully-cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn’t follow what they’d done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard - all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight’s proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment - even Musa’s, Mila’s, and Neel’s. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July.‘Take hold of yourselves,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a disguise, remember? This isn’t going to work if the people meant to help me can’t keep their heads.’‘It will work, Lady Granddaughter.’ Tess handed Fire two knives in ankle holsters. ‘You’ll get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child - Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse.
— Kristin Cashore, Fire
It is in doing things and not reading about them that results come about.
— Stephen Richards
It is your vibrational thoughts that give life to the goals you wish for.
— Stephen Richards
It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart—never the sensation of the moment.
— Roger Zelazny, Threshold
To be happy, make others happy.
— Stephen Richards
I absolutely think that happiness is a choice. One of the most potent forces in human psychology is the power of habit. Do something, think something, often enough and it will become the only thing you can do or think. Choose to be unhappy and soon that’s all you will be. Live in a swamp and you’ll grow webbed feet.
— Nicholas Evans
Beliefs are not related to religion but they are basically about who you are.
— Stephen Richards, Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free
It's no shame in reaching second or third base if you aimed for first base.
— Stephen Richards
The more you take responsibility for your attitudes, the more you can adjust yourself in a forward thinking manner.
— Deborah Day
Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.
— Francis Gray
One who swims with the tide and not the other side will benefit from the opportunity that flows.
— Stephen Richards, Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free
When faced with a hurdle then give it all you've got to jump over it because it can't be done in two stages.
— Stephen Richards
Sometimes you have to get sad before you get happy 'cause otherwise how would you know the difference?
— Maureen Child, And Then Came You: Sam's Story
We just wanna be the happy bums that we are. That's all.
— Mike Patton
Use ‘Why?’ to help you follow the breadcrumbs back to the source of the problem.
— Stephen Richards
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
— Eric Hoffer
In the West, for example, people believe they must 'pursue happiness' as if it were some kind of a flighty bird that is always out of reach. In the East, we believe we are born with happiness and one of life's important takes, my mother told me, is to protect it.
— Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
Your purpose is your why.
— Deborah Day
Move on. Be well. Go for it!
— Sally Stubbs, If Life Gives You Lemons: How 10-Seconds a Day Will Bring You Happiness
I have wanted only one thing to make me happy. That thing is everything.
— Sebastian Horsley
Sadness is not the beginning or end of a process, but the lag between pleasure and happiness.
— Isra
Living the dream.
— Tom Giaquinto, Be A Good Human
Be a good human.
— Tom Giaquinto, Be A Good Human
Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.
— Sebastian Faulks, Engleby
The greatest gift you can ever give another person is your own happiness
— Esther Hicks
Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.
— François Lelord, Hector and the Search for Happiness
Money can't buy love, but it improves your bargaining position.
— Christopher Marlowe
A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances.
— Aristotle
I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.
— Alan Bennett, The History Boys
The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.
— Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation
Every day, you get the opportunity to change your life. Change what you do not want. Change what makes you unhappy.
— Rodolfo Costa, Advice My Parents Gave Me: and Other Lessons I Learned from My Mistakes
There were happy days, with watermelon, and sad days of whiskey.
— Lewis Nordan
There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events.Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart.
— Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Stories
I'm not in pursuit of happiness, I'm happiness in pursuit; ready to happen everywhere I go.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.
— François Lelord, Hector and the Search for Happiness
Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
…I realized my happiness was artificial. I felt happy because I saw the others were happy and because I knew I should feel happy, but I wasn't really happy.
— Roberto Bolaño, 2666
The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.
— Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation
It turns out that what money buys has rapidly diminishing emotional returns ... As long as we're not destitute, happiness depends less on getting what we want than appreciating what we already have.
— Robert B. Reich
Intent not followed by action is an insult to your design. Decide what you want, create a plan, and get your ass out there!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.
— Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation
We remember though all the firelit glowOf a great hearth's gleam and glare,And we looked for a space at each happy faceAnd the love that was written there.
— Caris Brooke
I feel as though I should say something profound, or enact some rite, or trade something to make it official. I want to transfer some trinket which would allow me to say that she's my girl, some kind of currency that proves to people that she likes me back. Something that would permit me to think about her all the time without feeling guilty or helpless or hopelessly far away. I guess I'm just so excited, I want to cage this thing like a tiny red bird so if can't fly away, so it stays the same, so it's still there the next time. For keeps, like a coin in your pocket. Like a peach pit from Mad Jack Lionel's tree. Like scribbled words in a locked suitcase. A bright balloon to tie to your bedpost. And you want to hug it close, hold it, but not so tight it bursts.
— Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones