c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I could hear the knock and whistle of the water pipes, the purr of the calico cat. And at that moment a happiness filled me that was pure and perfect and yet it was bled with despair - as if I had been handed a cup of ambrosial nectar to drink from and knew that once I finished drinking, the cup would be withdrawn forever, and nothing to come would ever taste as good.
— David Leavitt, While England Sleeps
The end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature
— John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
If you think happiness is a rare bird you won't see much of it.
— Marty Rubin
Happiness is a decision and so as Love. If you decide to be happy then you're happy. If you decide to love then you love.
— Ann Marie Aguilar
Não é verdade que a felicidade é aquilo que procuramos sem nunca sermos capazes de a reconhecer?
— Marc Levy, Le premier jour
Happiness is something that you cannot see. It is naturally felt. When you feel it, you wouldn't wanna let go of it. It makes you smile. It keeps you going. It gives you the energy that nothing and nobody can give. Ig pushes to do things that renders positive vibe inside. Happiness is felt in the most unexpected time and place. It's a natural phenomenon.
— Nio Noveno
Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle
Original, in French: La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur. English: Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.
— Auguste Escoffier
When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.
— Jeffrey Bernard, Reach for the Ground: The Downhill Struggle of Jeffrey Bernard
Man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
— Albert Einstein
Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?
— Roman Payne
Only a fool can be happy. For happiness consists of two contradictory elements: contentment and pleasure. Enjoy pleasure and you have no contentment; be content and you have no pleasure. For this reason happiness is conceivable only for those who enjoy themselves without thinking that they will always want more and thus be discontented, or for those who are content without thinking that they have no pleasure. Whoever reflects can never be happy, unless he is a fanatic and thus blinded…thus exercising control over his intelligence with his feelings, instead of the other way round
— Marcellus Emants, A Posthumous Confession
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities..
— Christian Nestell Bovee
No one can obtain felicity by pursuit. This explains why one of the elements of being happy is the feeling that a debt of gratitude is owed, a debt impossible to pay. Now, we do not owe gratitude to ourselves. To be conscious of gratitude is to acknowledge a gift.
— Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation
La felicidad es una bendición, pero generalmente es también una conquista.
— Paulo Coelho
Our greatest happiness comes from the experience of love & compassion.
— Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
He turned from the sight of human ignorance and human fate and the sea eating the ground we stand on, which, had he been able to contemplate it fixedly might have led to something; and found consolation in trifles so slight compared with the august theme just now before him that he was disposed to slur that comfort over, to deprecate it, as if to be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Times of terror and the deepest misery may arrive, but if there is to be any happiness in this misery it can only be a spiritual happiness, related to the past in the rescue of the culture of early ages and to the future in a serene and indefatigable championship of the spirit in a time which would otherwise completely swallow up the material.
— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.
— Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
We each sell alittle piece of happiness. You are elevating someone's spirit in some way, and to do that you have to understand the source of their angst and then you have to frame your product as a solution.
— Sonia Marciano
..there is more to life than just pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it.
— Eric    Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
People argue themselves out of their pleasures
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
I am happy and content because I think I am.
— Alain-René Le Sage
The golden rule of business is supply and demand. I venture to say that this is also the rule of happiness. When a balance is achieved between our desires and another's willingness to satisfy them, the result is a sympathetic, mutually rewarding relationship. (...) a thriving economy of love.' - character Mike Lambeth
— Caroline Adderson, Sitting Practice: A Novel
Find happiness where you can," she said softly. "It's not just the great big whammo things. Look for the beauty of life in the small things, and you'll be the happiest person alive.
— Jackie Sigmund, The Right Words at the Right Time Volume 2: Your Turn!
It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.
— Horace
…feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them.
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Each to their own reality
— T. Donaldson
Можно лежать на мосту и смотреть, как течет вода. Или бегать, или побродить по болоту в красных сапожках, или же свернуться клубочком и слушать, как дождь стучит по крыше. Быть счастливой очень легко.
— Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November
May I nurture the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can change and wisdom to know the difference
— Frank Ra (Exstatica), A Course in Happiness: An Authentic Happiness Formula for Well-Being, Meaning and Flourishing
Don't look to a husband or a child or a friend or your family to make you happy. It is not within their capacity to do so.
— Barbara Barrington Jones, The Incredible Gifts of Women: 12 Gifts That Will Change Your Life Now
Analyzing data from 79 men and women who wore inconspicuous devices that recorded some of their conversations over the course of four days, researchers from Washington University and the University of Arizona found a correlation between feelings of well-being and the amount of time spent talking every day. Moreover, the more substantive your conversations, the happier you're likely to be. In other words, heart-to-hearts trump small talk. (LA Times, "A lof of happy talk", March 11, 2010, A21.)
— Meghan Daum
Being happy is a great science. If you are not happy, do not be confused. Happiness is hard to achieve.
— Petar Dunov
Manners and politeness will never become old-fashioned.
— Auliq Ice
My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.
— Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
It might be true that it is “quality time” that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Happiness is the change that comes over mewhen I describe the worldIt comes over the worldHappiness is the change that comes over mewhen I'm afraidIt comes over the worldFor instance I can be afraid of and for the worldafraid because the world consists among other thingsof me so swiftly dying
— Inger Christensen, it
When I count my blessings, I find you in every one.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
It's always something here - if there isn't a riot, then someone's usually trying to escape. The wasted effort helps me see the positives of imprisonment. Unlike those pulling their hair out in good society, here we don't have to feel ashamed of our day-to-day unhappiness. Here we have someone visible to blame - someone wearing shiny boots. That's why, on consideration, freedom leaves me cold. Because out there in the real world, freedom means you have to admit authorship, even when your story turns out to be a real stinker.
— Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
A sense of peace came over me and I must have been smiling as I fell asleep.
— Harry Bernstein, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers
...the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Where else," I will say, "does an old turtle crossing the path Make all the difference in the world?
— Patricia MacLachlan, All the Places to Love
Money is time. With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman.
— George Gissing
Holiness leads to wholeness and wholeness leads to happiness.
— Leslie Vernick, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy
I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world's goods. But blow for blow I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world's happiness.
— Charles E. Coughlin
Health, wealth, happiness,live long and always prosper,have families and also friends,let them be lasting in me forever.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product. attr to Buthan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck
— John Robbins, Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World's Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples
Life always gives us another change: It's called "To Move On".
— Ana Claudia Antunes, A-Z of Happiness: Tips for Living and Breaking Through the Chain that Separates You from Getting That Dream Job
Kurzes Glück kann jeder.
— Kurt Tucholsky, Schloß Gripsholm / Rheinsberg
Your words, thoughts, intentions and actions today are your best hope, comfort, building blocks and insurance for tomorrow. But it is now alone that is guaranteed – tomorrow is a dream, a maybe a potential gift. It’s now - not tomorrow - where happiness and fulfilment live...awaiting your discovery. It’s all this that will make each extra day that may arrive extra special and rich.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
It is difficult to live in and enjoy the moment when you are thinking about the past or worrying about the future.
— Roy  Bennett
She doesn't need your money. Even a penniless fool like you can make her fall in love with you. That's just miracle.
— Vann Chow, Shanghai Nobody
It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality only been more conspicuous than others, not more frequent, or more severe.
— Samuel Johnson, Life of Richard Savage
The glitter of the great world, you know, is only so much froth and spume: you may look in vain for happiness there.
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
I believe our clever young man has intuited that while only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many.
— Viet Thanh Nguyen
I like the disaster of the night sky, stars spilling this way and that as if they were upturned from a glass. I like the way good madness feels. I like the way laughter always spills. That's the word for it. It never just comes, it spills. I like the word 'again'. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. I like the quiet sound a coffee cup makes when it's set down on a wooden table. So hushed. So inviting. Like morning light yawning through the window and stretching out onto the kitchen floor. I like the way girls' lips look like they're stained with berries. I like the way morning light breaks like a prism through the empty wine bottles on our dusty apartment floor. Glasses empty except for the midnight hour. I like the way blueberries stain my fingers during the summer. I like the way light hits your eyes and turns it into a color that doesn't exist anywhere else other than in this moment. I want it all. I want the breeze to call my name as it rushes down my street, looking for me. I want to feel grass underneath my bare feet and I want to feel the sun kiss freckles onto my cheeks. I want to hear you yell hello as you make your way towards me, not goodbye as you have to go. That's just a little bit about me.
— Marlen Komar, Ugly People Beautiful Hearts
I felt I could turn the earth upside down with my littlest finger. I wanted to dance, to fly in the air and kiss the sun and stars with my singing heart. I, alone with myself, was enjoying myself for the first time as with grandest company.
— Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers
Personality begins where comparison leaves off. Be unique. Be memorable. Be confident. Be proud.
— Shannon L. Alder
Dads. Do your faces light up when you first see your child in the morning or when you come home from work? Do you not understand that a child’s entire sense of value can revolve around what they see in your face when you first see them?
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
If you have time to whine then you have time to find solution.
— Dee Dee Artner
Do you not realize that your kids are going to make mistakes, and a lot of them? Do you not realize the damage you do when you push your son’s nose into his mishaps or make your daughter feel worthless because she bumped or spilled something? Do you have any idea how easy it is to make your child feel abject? It’s as simple as letting out the words, “why would you do that!?” or “how many times have I told you…
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Joy weathers any storm: Happiness rides the waves.
— Todd Stocker
How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.
— Edgar Allan Poe, Berenice
Don't interpret anything too much. This is time waster number 1.
— Dee Dee Artner
If you walk in joy, happiness is close behind.
— Todd Stocker
WE can learn to rejoice in even the smallest blessings our life holds. It is easy to miss our own good fortune
—  often happiness comes in ways we don’t even notice.
Happy people are those who use a lower threshold in order to label an event positive.
— David Niven
To fall in love for any reason does cause fires of emotion. When we are in love, we ride on a positive energy as compared to not being in love. When we are love, we transcend conditional love to that of unconditional and we are now flowering in consciousness. Love is a very important element of consciousness as it becomes purer with Source union even as our consciousness is expanded further. Consciousness is love that is light.
— Nandhiji, Mastery of Consciousness: Awaken the Inner Prophet: Liberate Yourself with Yogic Wisdom.
We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of life.
— R.W. van Bemmelen
Be like the flower, content with its nature.
— Seth D.
Huge difference between being happy at will, and chasing euphoric moments as an escape. One doesn't cost a dime, the other will tax your soul.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Happiness is wanting what you have.
— Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Achingly Alice
You are the moon that breaks the night . You are the fear that I hate to fight. Times are wrong in all that is done. My treasure is love that I give to only one. Cherrish the treasures given to your heart and never let anything hurt from the start. You chose your path so accept and believe, that peace love and light are needed to breathe.
— Peace Gypsy
By making yourself a life-long leaner you’ll keep discovering new and exciting things about yourself and others.
— Rachel Robins, How To Feel Good About Yourself - Boost Your Confidence & Tackle Low Self Esteem. Packed with Self Improvement Techniques, Positive Thinking Tips & Inspirational Quotes
Give up smoking cold turkey. Start a diet in the next 5 min. Accept that job right away. Life can be beautiful without planning!
— Rossana Condoleo
(...) La felicidad es tener un corazón capaz de amar. Es saber que has sido importante para alguien... Que de algún modo, en algún momento, has marcado la diferencia. Y la muerte no es nada en comparación con esos momentos.
— José Antonio Cotrina, La sombra de la luna
Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.
— Jack Kornfield, The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace
We advocate the atheistic philosophy because it is the only clear, consistent position which seems possible to us. As atheists, we simply deny the assumptions of theism; we declare that the God idea, in all its features, is unreasonable and unprovable; we add, more vitally, that the God idea is an interference with the interests of human happiness and progress. We oppose religion not merely as a set of theological ideas; but we must also oppose religion as a political, social and moral influence detrimental to the welfare of humanity.
— E. Haldeman-Julius, The meaning of atheism
One thing I've learned: we don't stumble accidentally into an amazing life. It takes decision, a commitment to consistently work on ourselves.
— Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth
The more people I meet the happier I become.
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
I am happy that I can aid those admirable men, both living and dead, who by their pens or their tongues have aided the great cause of human liberty and universal happiness.
— James Watson
This planet is a "Hell" and there is no "Heaven" up there. So, learn to be "Happy in Hell".
— Sandeep Mehra
Success, like happiness, is a by-product, not a goal.
— Roy  Bennett
A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy
— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Make a pledge to yourself right now, to declare that you are worth your time and energy.
— Deborah Day
I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.
— Thomas Browne
Don't live to be judged for what you haven't done. Live to be judged for what you have done.
— Stephen Richards
The most important reason for your “no” is that you need your downtime so you won’t behave like a jerk because you’re depleted. And you don’t want to battle an appetite spiked by the stress of overcommitment. But that’s your secret; others don’t need that information. So just smile, say no, thank you, and keep moving.
— Holly Mosier
The tragedy is that what you disapprove of in others is the very thing you disapprove of in yourself.
— Stephen Richards
Today I am even richer.
— Stephen Richards
In the autumn of your years don't make it so that what you look back on is regret. Live your life now so that whatever you do gives some sunshine before you head into the winter of your life.
— Stephen Richards
Riches can all be lost, but that happiness in your own heart can only be veiled, and it will bring you happiness again, as long as you live.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Without enthusiasm then what we have surrounded ourselves with becomes worthless.
— Stephen Richards
The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
You don't have to be like anyone else. You just need to learn more about your own creative self and start blooming.
— Deborah Day
I think it doesn’t matter if you or I or anybody else thinks homosexuality is a sin. It doesn’t matter if you or I think anything is a sin. It doesn’t matter if homosexuality is a sin or not. In fact, it doesn’t matter if anything anybody else does is a sin or not.Because sin is a very personal thing! It always has been and it always will be!And it has nothing to do with love.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself. It is in this relationship that you set the standard for all others.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
If you can have everything at fifty that you wanted when you were fifteen, you're happy.
— Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
[Happiness] comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment in our lives.
— Jean Vanier, Finding Peace
The future never happens
—  there will always be a future.
I swore that I would not suffer from the world's grief and the world's stupidity and cruelty and injustice and I made my heart as hard in endurance as the nether millstone and my mind as a polished surface of steel. I no longer suffered, but enjoyment had passed away from me.
— Sri Aurobindo
-Please, Anita, go home, and don’t freak. Just go home, and be happy. Be happy, and let everyone around you be happy. Is that so hard?When Jason said it like that, it didn’t seem hard. In fact, it seemed to make a lot of sense, but inside, it felt hard. Inside it felt like the hardest thing in the world. To just let go, and not pick everything to death. To just let go and enjoy what you had. To just let go and not make everybody around you miserable with your own internal dialogue. To just let go and be happy. So simple. So difficult. So terrifying.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Incubus Dreams
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
— Maria Mitchell
We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times was till I left, but I guess that's the way of it
— Ron Rash, Serena
If you are doing things in order to be happy...you're doing them in the wrong order.
— Michael Neill
Pick a sunset, and we'll ride off into it together.
— T.M. Brenner
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.[Eddie Scissons]
— W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
Your beliefs have the power to unlock your inner genius or keep you from fully achieving your greatest potential.
— Deborah Day, BE HAPPY NOW!
While amidst the crowd and seeking quieteness in another zone you can still get away from them by homing in on matters within.
— Stephen Richards
Life isn't about counting what you've earned or what you've done for others. I think life is in those in-between moments when you do something, and you feel really, truly happy just by doing it.
— Snigdha Rai
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.
— T.H. White, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me
If you do not have persistence then no amount of education, talent or genius can make up for it.
— Stephen Richards
The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!
— François Lelord, Hector and the Search for Happiness
The only thing limiting your aspiration is your imagination.
— Stephen Richards
Many people see happiness only in their future.
— François Lelord, Hector and the Search for Happiness
When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves.
— Jess C. Scott, Clear: A Guide to Treating Acne Naturally
Percy wakes me (fourteen)Percy wakes me and I am not ready.He has slept all night under the covers.Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter Where he is not supposed to be. How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you  Needed me,  To wake me. He thought he would a lecture and deeply  His eyes begin to shine.He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.He squirms and squeals: he has done something  That he needed  And now he hears that it is okay. I scratch his ears. I turn him over And touch him everywhere. He isWild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then He has breakfast, and he is happy.This is a poem about Percy.This is a poem about more than Percy.Think about it.
— Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
You are human, so stop acting as if though you are a sheep and start thinking for yourself.
— Stephen Richards
What I'm feeling, I think, is joy. And it's been some time since I've felt that blinkered rush of happiness, This might be one of those rare events that lasts, one that'll be remembered and recalled as months and years wind and ravel. One of those sweet, significant moments that leaves a footprint in your mind. A photograph couldn't ever tell its story. It's like something you have to live to understand. One of those freak collisions of fizzing meteors and looming celestial bodies and floating debris and one single beautiful red ball that bursts into your life and through your body like an enormous firework. Where things shift into focus for a moment, and everything makes sense. And it becomes one of those things inside you, a pearl among sludge, one of those big exaggerated memories you can invoke at any moment to peel away a little layer of how you felt, like a lick of ice cream. The flavor of grace.
— Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones
Grief helps you come to grips with the loss of a loved one. Guilt helps you make better moral decisions or bring you to apologise for a wrongdoing. In proper doses, these types of negative emotions are necessary and healthy.
— Stephen Richards
If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?
— Jodi Picoult, Keeping Faith
There is one kind of laugh that I always did recommend; it looks out of the eye first with a merry twinkle, then it creeps down on its hands and knees and plays around the mouth like a pretty moth around the blaze of a candle, then it steals over into the dimples of the cheeks and rides around in those whirlpools for a while, then it lights up the whole face like the mellow bloom on a damask rose, then it swims up on the air, with a peal as clear and as happy as a dinner-bell, then it goes back again on gold tiptoes like an angel out for an airing, and it lies down on its little bed of violets in the heart where it came from.
— Josh Billings
…she had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever…
— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?
— Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child
What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.
— Albert Camus, A Happy Death
Pessimists never go on a voyage of discovery, equally so they never leave the shoreline in search of new horizons.
— Stephen Richards
Just like your body and lifestyle can be healthy or unhealthy, the same is true with your beliefs. Your beliefs can be your medicine or your poison.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
When we have reached the depths of despair, only then can we look up and see the light of hope.
— Stephen Richards
There is no greater misery than false joys.
— Bernard of Clairvaux
The Law of Attraction is a theory. Cosmic Ordering is a practice putting that theory to work.
— Stephen Richards
Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet
I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals.
— Oscar Wilde
The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings. The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.
— Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs
But there was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach.
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
— Bertrand Russell
When you are in a room with Kurtis, whether its one or a hundred he is the only person that matters.
— Dee Remy, There Once Was A Boy
Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy.
— Richard Francis Burton
Many people are so poor that the only thing they have is money. Cultivate your spiritual growth.
— Rodolfo Costa, Advice My Parents Gave Me: and Other Lessons I Learned from My Mistakes
Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco
#1487: Hug a cow.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr., The Complete Life's Little Instruction Book
Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?
— Amin Maalouf, Orígenes
Happiness is an illusion, Natalie. It doesn't actually exist.""Of course it does," I said. "It's what you feel when you're not sad.""That's unconsciousness. And I'm pretty sure that I'm miserable when I am unconscious, too.
— Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk on the Couch
O seasons, O castles,What soul is without flaws?All its lore is known to me,Felicity, it enchants us all.
— Arthur Rimbaud, Season in Hell  Other Poems
I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.
— Emma Goldman, Living My Life
Nothing succeeds like indifference to success.
— Marty Rubin
I am happy.I have something to accomplish, create, and achieve.I am happy.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Peace and happiness are powerful weapons against the Egos.
— Belsebuub
Enjoy the rainbow while it lasts and don't chase it when it's gone.
— Marty Rubin
Julia was as happy as Betsy was, almost. One nice thing about Julia was that she rejoiced in other people's luck.
— Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
Happiness and joy are not the same. For what does the fervent craving for joy mean? It does not mean that we wish at any cost to experience the psychic state of being joyful. We want to have reason for joy, for an unceasing joy that fills us utterly, sweeps all before it, exceeds all measure.
— Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation
it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.
— Mary Karr
Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation.
— Wilhelm von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt
Not matter what your sacred or religious book is, it's not how well you know the book, it's how well you're in alignment with the author.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Happiness is essentially a gift
—  we are not the forgers of our own felicity.
I hate you. I wish you was dead."Mrs. Carey gasped. He said the words so savagely that it gave her quite a start. She had nothing to say. She sat down in her husband's chair; and as she thought of her desire to love the friendless, crippled boy and her eager wish that he should love her--she was a barren woman and, even though it was clearly God's will that she should be childless, she could scarcely bear to look at little children sometimes, her heart ached so--the tears rose to her eyes and one by one, slowly, rolled down her cheeks. Philip watched her in amazement. She took out her handkerchief, and now she cried without restraint. Suddenly Philip realised that she was crying because of what he had said, and he was sorry. He went up to her silently and kissed her. It was the first kiss he had ever given herwithout being asked. And the poor lady, so small in her black satin, shrivelled up and sallow, with her funny corkscrew curls, took the little boy on her lap and put her arms around him and wept as though her heart would break. But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.
— W. Somerset Maugham
The key to happiness? Find someone who would rather you be happy than themselves and then you treat them the same way. That way, no matter what, you are both trying to insure the OTHER person's happiness and in turn, yours is undeniable.
— Sharon Swan
Learn to cherish the chase as much as you treasure the trophy.
— Joe Caruso, The Power of Losing Control
...with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech: happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or even fully grasped; it should be allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed, if it ever comes at all.
— John McGahern, That They May Face The Rising Sun
Happiness: the feeling of being alive.
— Marty Rubin
...[A] certain degree of un-understanding (not mis-, but un-) is the only possible sanctuary which one human being can offer to another in the midst of the devastating intimacy of a happy marriage.
— Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver
As we drove off into the moonless night, raindrops danced through our headlights like the fireflies of my childhood. I silently cursed the frailty of happiness and doubted whether it ever existed for me. I could remember happier times, though, and those memories fluttered about my mind like fireflies, beckoning with their elusive splendor. But chasing memories held no more promise than catching fireflies. The pursued feelings either vanished or lost their magic upon examination, hardly the green-glowing beauty seen at a distance. So I looked ahead of me and dreamed on into the darkness, hoping to one day find someone who would love me.
— Scott Gaille, The Unmerciful Lawyer
... but happiness is to joy as an electric light bulb is to the sun. Happiness always has an object, you're happy because of something, it's a condition whose existence depends on external things. Joy, on the other hand, has no object. It seizes you for no apparent reason, it's like the sun, its burning is fueled by its own heart.
— Susanna Tamaro, Follow Your Heart
Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don't want either to give or to take ... You don't want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person.""That's true. That's the truest thing you ever said.""All right. I can respect that. Only you've got to play the game. Don't force an emotional situation and then blame me for it.""But I don't want any situation. I want to be left in peace.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase
Heureux sont ceux qui peuvent aimer et haïr sans feinte, sans détour, sans nuance.
— Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française
Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence.
— Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent-a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet is insufferable.
— Rabih Alameddine
At some point in the night she had a dream. Or it was possible that she was partially awake, and was only remembering a dream? She was alone among the rocks on a dark coast beside the sea. The water surged upward and fell back languidly, and in the distance she heard surf breaking slowly on a sandy shore. It was comforting to be this close to the surface of the ocean and gaze at the intimate nocturnal details of its swelling and ebbing. And as she listened to the faraway breakers rolling up onto the beach, she became aware of another sound entwined with the intermittent crash of waves: a vast horizontal whisper across the bossom of the sea, carrying an ever-repeated phrase, regular as a lighthouse flashing: Dawn will be breaking soon. She listened a long time: again and again the scarcely audible words were whispered across the moving water. A great weight was being lifted slowly from her; little by little her happiness became more complete, and she awoke. Then she lay for a few minutes marveling the dream, and once again fell asleep.
— Paul Bowles, Up Above the World
There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another. It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever.
— Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
Happiness is like time and space--we make and measure it ourselves; it is a fancy--as big, as little, as you please; just a thing of contrasts and comparisons, like health or strength or beauty or any other good--that wouldn't even be noticed but for sad personal experience of its opposite!--or its greater!
— George du Maurier
Das Glück ist das einzige, das sich verdoppelt, wenn man es teilt.
— Albert Schweitzer
Nijedna tuđa sreća nije bez pomalo sreće i za nas druge. Zato je jedna velika mudrost od tuđe sreće praviti sreću i za sebe.
— Jovan Dučić
It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.
— Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative.
— Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when "Hawk" Dawson actually doffed his red "C" cap to me, and everyone cheered and practically convulsed into tears - you can't patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks" or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me.
— Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land
Once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it's as simple as the salty taste of pork, and the vast deal of chewing in it, and how, when the chew is gone, you can still scrape at the bone with your bottom teeth and suck at the marrow.
— Franny Billingsley, Chime
No other thing or no other person is going to make me happy in life, I just have to do that myself.
— Greg Page
If you investigate the matter deeply enough and widely enough, you will find that happiness eludes nearly all men despite the fact that they are forever seeking it. The fortunate and successful few are those who have stopped seeking with the ego alone and allow the search to be directed inwardly by the higher self. They alone can find a happiness unblemished by defects or deficiencies, a Supreme Good which is not a further source of pain and sorrow but an endless source of satisfaction and peace.
— Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton
It must be nice to be so strong and to think it's because you're so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a thing as luck, and there's more bad luck than good in this world.
— Laura Lippman, Baltimore Blues
Human unhappiness is evidence of our immortality.
— Richard Rodríguez, Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father
When you've succeeded, you'd say:'Indeed I'd to go through those hell before fit into all of this happiness.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Das Glück ist nicht in den Dingen, die wir besitzen, sondern in den Dingen, die zu besitzen wir glauben.
— Johannes Mario Simmel
Happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic.
— Jane Austen, Emma
Emmy has embarked on her journey to enrich the world with smiles. They are free, healthy, and often, very contagious.
— Emmy Swain
The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills. ("The Striding Place")
— Gertrude Atherton, The Bell in the Fog & Other Stories
Gratitude was never meant to be an excuse for giving up on the obstacles God has put before you. Some of the most magical things he can bring us require faith and a lot of planning.
— Shannon L. Alder
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becksOur ready minds to fellowship divine,A fellowship with essence; till we shine,Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. BeholdThe clear religion of heaven!
— John Keats
We all need a technological detox; we need to throw away our phones and computers instead of using them as our pseudo-defence system for anything that comes our way. We need to be bored and not have anything to use to shield the boredom away from us. We need to be lonely and see what it is we really feel when we are. If we continue to distract ourselves so we never have to face the realities in front of us, when the time comes and you are faced with something bigger than what your phone, food, or friends can fix, you will be in big trouble.
— Evan Sutter, Solitude: How Doing Nothing Can Change the World
If you stand right at the edge of the night sky, some place where one o’clock leaves to meet two, the breeze will carry your words up to the stars. And they’ll swallow your secrets until its time to hand them over to the truths in the sky- the ones that draw maps in the black. They carve their answers into the backs of my hands, the grooves of the words running deep in my palms.
— Marlen Komar, Ugly People Beautiful Hearts
My dear Scipio and Laelius. Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero