Quill / Moments / Quotes about happiness
Quotes about happiness
Ancient philosophers treated happiness as a question about how to live. Feeling good came into it less. Seneca wrote a whole dialogue on the happy life, and the answer involves a lot of virtue and very little fun.
Schopenhauer thought the best you could hope for was less pain. Marden wrote a book insisting cheerfulness was a life power. Most people land somewhere between the two, and it can be restful to see that the argument never got settled.
From the books
Checked word for word against public-domain editions.
What matters it how far Alexander extended his conquests, if he was not yet satisfied with what he had?
Read the passage around this line
… are achieved with labor, and the very guard of them is painful. Ambition puffs us up with vanity and wind: and we are equally troubled either to see any body before us, or nobody behind us; so that we lie under a double envy; for whosoever envies another is also envied himself. What matters it how far Alexander extended his conquests, if he was not yet satisfied with what he had? Every man wants as much as he covets; and it is lost labor to pour into a vessel that will never be full. He that had subdued so many princes and nations, upon the killing of Clytus (one friend) and the loss of Hyphestion (another) delivered himself up to anger and sadness; …
To love beauty is to see the light.
Read the passage around this line
The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic, the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why the torch of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on to France. Divine, illuminating nations of scouts! Vitælampada tradunt.
Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions.
Read the passage around this line
Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions. These conditions you can create for yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light. In nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them; and, if you wait and watch, come they will.
We shall never want a subject for complaint if we look at benefits on their wrong side.
Read the passage around this line
… and strikes down the crops of the best of men; every man has to take his chance, in friendship as well as in everything else." There is no benefit so great that spitefulness can pick no holes in it, none so paltry that it cannot be made more of by friendly interpretation. We shall never want a subject for complaint if we look at benefits on their wrong side.
Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow.
Read the passage around this line
… its parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live for them;—that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as the arrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all other right relations. Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are not intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other. And among the many apparently beautiful things which turn, through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that the thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of …
To be truly happy is a question of how we begin and not of how we end, of what we want and not of what we have.
Let us live happily then, though we call nothing our own!
An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon.
Cheerfulness gives elasticity to the spirit.
Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.
In proportion as one loses himself in the way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.
You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.
Have I less than I hoped for? well, perhaps I hoped for more than I ought.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more.
You must be the best judge of your own happiness.
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality.
Do not linger to gather flowers to keep them, but walk on, for flowers will keep themselves blooming all your way.
Why are we forever looking upon the horizon for what upon closer view lies at our feet?
Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation.
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness which Nature has kindly placed within our reach.
Wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant.
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
We ask for long life, but ’tis deep life, or grand moments, that signify.
All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
We may learn to know the world as we please: it will always retain a bright and a dark side.
Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!
How cheaply happiness can be given!
Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.
Two men who live in the same house and do the same work may not live in the same world.
The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.
Popular sayings
Widely repeated lines with no name attached, because nobody can honestly put one on them.
Life is what you make it.
A positive attitude brings positive results.
Dreams are free.
Life is a gift.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
Don't take yourself too seriously.
Build a life you don't need a vacation from.
Live simply.
Put a line like these under your clock. Free forever for basic widgets and 3 of your own lines. Pro from $2.99 a month, with unlimited lines.
Coming soon to the App Store