Happiness

From Wikiquote
Jump to: navigation, search
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally... ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history.

Contents

[edit] Quotes

  • Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
  • In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child.
  • To have been happy, madame, adds to calamity.
    • Beaumont and Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn (licensed 22 January 1626; 1647), Act I, scene 1, line 250.
  • Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss
    Of Paradise that hast survived the Fall!
  • Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
    Less on exterior things than most suppose.
  • Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
    • Mahatma Gandhi, bas quoted in Humor, Play, & Laughter : Stress-proofing Life with Your Kids (1998) by Joseph A. Michelli, p. 88
  • Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
    Our own felicity to make or find.
  • Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
  • We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  • We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
  • The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
    • Thomas Jefferson Letter "to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland" (31 March 1809)
  • How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. … All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
  • Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
  • A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
  • Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
  • The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
  • The nicest thing about being happy is that you think you'll never be unhappy again.
  • Oh happiness! our being's end and aim!
    Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate'er thy name;
    That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh,
    For which we bear to live, or dare to die.
  • Fix'd to no spot is Happiness sincere;
    'Tis nowhere to be found, or ev'rywhere;
    'Tis never to be bought, but always free.
  • Heaven to mankind impartial we confess,
    If all are equal in their happiness;
    But mutual wants this happiness increase,
    All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace.
  • Perfect the Will, the Mind, Feeling, their corporeal organs and their material tools; be useful to yourselves, to your own ones, and to others; and Happiness, insofar as it exists on this earth, will come of itself."
  • Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
  • Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell.
  • Happiness does not depend on the size or content of a goal, but on the strength of the desire to have it.
  • Happiness is possible only in a relationship with a partner. Imagine that some fellow who has lived his life as a singer goes to an uninhabited island and sings as loudly as possible. If there is no one there to hear him, he will not be happy. To realize that we exist for the sake of others is the great achievement that changes our lives. When we realize that our life is not ours alone but is meant to be for the sake of the other, we begin to follow a path different from the one we were on. Just as singing to yourself will not make you happy, there is no joy without a partner. Even the smallest and most trivial thing can bring you happiness when you do it for another.
  • O terque quaterque beati.
    • O thrice, four times happy they!
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), I. 94.
  • True happiness ne'er entered at an eye;
    True happiness resides in things unseen.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 1,021.

[edit] Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 350-52.
  • Hold him alone truly fortunate who has ended his life in happy well-being.
  • 'Twas a jolly old pedagogue, long ago,
    Tall and slender, and sallow and dry;
    His form was bent, and his gait was slow,
    His long thin hair was white as snow,
    But a wonderful twinkle shone in his eye.
    And he sang every night as he went to bed,
    "Let us be happy down here below;
    The living should live, though the dead be dead,"
    Said the jolly old pedagogue long ago.
  • Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
  • La massima felicita divisa nel maggior numero.
    • The greatest happiness of the greatest number.
    • Cesare Beccaria, Trattato dei Delitti e delle Pene (Treatise of Crimes and of Punishment), Introduction (1764).
  • Priestly was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth—that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
  • Quid enim est melius quam memoria recte factorum, et libertate contentum negligere humana?
    • What can be happier than for a man, conscious of virtuous acts, and content with liberty, to despise all human affairs?
    • Brutus, to Cicero. Cicero's Letters, I, 16, 9.
  • Oh, Mirth and Innocence! Oh, Milk and Water!
    Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!
  • * * * all who joy would win
    Must share it,—Happiness was born a twin.
  • There comes
    For ever something between us and what
    We deem our happiness.
  • Quid datur a divis felici optatius hora?
    • What is there given by the gods more desirable than a happy hour?
    • Catullus, Carmina, LXII. 30.
  • The message from the hedge-leaves,
    Heed it, whoso thou art;
    Under lowly eaves
    Lives the happy heart.
  • In animi securitate vitam beatam ponimus.
    • We think a happy life consists in tranquillity of mind.
    • Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I. 20.
  • Le bonheur semble fait pour être partagé.
  • If solid happiness we prize,
    Within our breast this jewel lies,
    And they are fools who roam;
    The world has nothing to bestow,
    From our own selves our bliss must flow,
    And that dear hut,—our home.
  • Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
    And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own.
  • Das beste Glück, des Lebens schönste Kraft
    Ermattet endlich.
  • Now happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature: it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool.
  • The loss of wealth is loss of dirt,
    As sages in all times assert;
    The happy man's without a shirt.
  • And there is ev'n a happiness
    That makes the heart afraid.
  • Fuge magna, licet sub paupere tecto
    Reges et regum vita procurrere amicos.
    • Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be more real happiness than kings or their favorites enjoy.
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 10. 32.
  • Non possidentem multa vocaveris
    Recte beatum; rectius occupat
    Nomen beati, qui Deorum
    Muneribus sapienter uti,
    Duramque callet pauperiem pati,
    Pejusque leto flagitium timet.
    • You will not rightly call him a happy man who possesses much; he more rightly earns the name of happy who is skilled in wisely using the gifts of the gods, and in suffering hard poverty, and who fears disgrace as worse than death.
    • Horace, Carmina, IX, Book 4. 9. 45.
  • That Action is best which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery.
    • Frances Hutcheson, Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). Treatise II, Section 3. An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil.
  • Upon the road to Romany
    It's stay, friend, stay!
    There's lots o' love and lots o' time
    To linger on the way;
    Poppies for the twilight,
    Roses for the noon,
    It's happy goes as lucky goes,
    To Romany in June.
  • Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
  • Ducimus autem
    Hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitæ,
    Nec jactare jugum vita didicere magistra.
    • We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
    • Juvenal, Satires, XII. 20.
  • On n'est jamais si heureux, ni si malheureux, qu'on se l'imagine.
  • A sound Mind in a sound Body, is a short but full description of a happy State in this World.
  • Happiness, to some elation;
    Is to others, mere stagnation.
  • Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
    We are happy now because God wills it.
  • Sive ad felices vadam post funera campos,
    Seu ferar ardentem rapidi Phlegethontis ad undam,
    Nec sine te felix ero, nec tecum miser unquam.
    • Heaven would not be Heaven were thy soul not with mine, nor would Hell be Hell were our souls together.
    • Baptista Mantuanus, Eclogue, III. 108.
  • Neminem, dum adhuc viveret, beatum dici debere arbitrabatur.
    • He (Solon) considered that no one ought to be called happy as long as he was alive.
    • Valerius Maximus, Book VII. 2. Ext. 2. Same in Sophocles—Œdipus Rex. End. Herodotus—Clio. 32. Solon to Cræsus. Repeated by Cræsus to Cyrus when on his funeral pyre, thus obtaining his pardon.
  • No eye to watch and no tongue to wound us,
    All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.
  • The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
    The wise grows it under his feet.
  • Dicique beatus
    Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.
    • Before he is dead and buried no one ought to be called happy.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book III. 136.
  • Thus we never live, but we hope to live; and always disposing ourselves to be happy, it is inevitable that we never become so.
  • Said Scopas of Thessaly, "But we rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things."
    • Plutarch, Morals, Volume II. Of the Love of Wealth.
  • Le bonheur des méchants comme un torrent s'écoule.
    • The happiness of the wicked flows away as a torrent.
    • Jean Racine, Athalie, II. 7.
  • Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it, and by no means in the way the future keeps its promises.
  • Des Menschen Wille, das ist sein Glück.
  • O mother, mother, what is bliss?
    O mother, what is bale?
    Without my William what were heaven,
    Or with him what were hell?
  • Non potest quisquam beate degere, qui se tantum intuetur, qui omnia ad utilitates suas convertit; alteri vivas oportet, si vis tibi vivere.
    • No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.
    • Seneca, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XLVIII.
  • Ye seek for happiness—alas, the day!
    Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold,
    Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway
    For which, O willing slaves to Custom old,
    Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold.
  • Magnificent spectacle of human happiness.
  • Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.
  • Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
    Nor a friend to know me;
    All I ask, the heavens above,
    And the road below me.
  • For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart;
    And makes his pulses fly,
    To catch the thrill of a happy voice,
    And the light of a pleasant eye.
  • True happiness is to no spot confined.
    If you preserve a firm and constant mind,
    'Tis here, 'tis everywhere.
  • We're charm'd with distant views of happiness,
    But near approaches make the prospect less.

[edit] Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).
  • The sacrifices required in the Christian life are necessary to emancipate the soul, and raise it above its servile dependence on condition. They are losses of mere happiness, and for just that reason they are preparations of joy.
  • Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element.
  • It is a great truth, wonderful as it is undeniable, that all our happiness — temporal, spiritual, and eternal — consists in one thing; namely, in resigning ourselves to God, and in leaving ourselves with Him, to do with us and in us just as He pleases.
  • There is something better for us in the world than happiness. We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly and gratefully. We will add a thousand fold to the happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the future which it brings; but we will not place happiness first, and thus cloud our heads with doubts, and fill our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils 'grow the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.
  • When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself — nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.
  • In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
  • Happiness is neither within us nor without us, it is the union of ourselves with God.
  • Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.
  • Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.
  • So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.
  • Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
    All joys, but joys that never can expire.

[edit] Unsourced

This section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikiquote by introducing appropriate citations.
  • There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.
  • I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.
  • It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.

[edit] External links

Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
v
At Wikiversity you can learn about:
Retrieved from "http://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Happiness&oldid=1388379"
Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Toolbox
In other languages