Happiness Quotations
Authors that have more than 2 quotes:
Albert Camus,
Mignon McLaughlin,
George Bernard Shaw
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| Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. |
| - Joseph Addison |
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| True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions. |
| - Joseph Addison |
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| Very little is needed to make a happy life. |
| - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus |
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| Happiness depends upon ourselves. |
| - Aristotle |
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| Sometimes it's hard to avoid the happiness of others. |
| - David Assael |
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| Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. |
| - Saint Aurelius Augustine |
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| A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| Gather the crumbs of happiness and they will make you a loaf of contentment. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| Happiness is the feeling you're feeling when you want to keep feeling it. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| Joy is a flower that blooms when you do. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| Some pursue happiness, others create it. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. |
| - Unknown Author |
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| Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. |
| - John Barrymore |
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| The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it. |
| - Al Batt |
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| He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. |
| - Henry Ward Beecher |
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| Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. |
| - Ambrose Bierce |
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| If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time. |
| - Josh Billings |
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| Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot. |
| - Josh Billings |
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| I've grown to realize the joy that comes from little victories is preferable to the fun that comes from ease and the pursuit of pleasure. |
| - Lawana Blackwell |
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| There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. |
| - Lady Marguerite Blessington |
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| Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. |
| - Robert Brault |
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| Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy. |
| - Sarah Ban Breathnach |
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| The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star. |
| - Anthelme Brillat-Savarin |
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| Happiness is the natural flower of duty. |
| - Phillips Brooks |
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| People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost. |
| - H. Jackson Jr. Brown |
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| One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory. |
| - Rita Mae Brown |
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| We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all. |
| - Jean de La Bruyère |
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| There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness. |
| - Pearl S. Buck |
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| But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? |
| - Albert Camus |
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| To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. |
| - Albert Camus |
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| You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. |
| - Albert Camus |
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| Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why. |
| - Eddie Cantor |
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| During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight. |
| - Fritjof Capra |
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| Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill. |
| - Johnny Carson |
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| People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy. |
| - Anton Chekhov |
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| Usefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental. |
| - Lydia Maria Child |
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| Be happy. It's one way of being wise. |
| - Colette |
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| What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. |
| - Colette |
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| To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. |
| - Charles Caleb Colton |
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| There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. |
| - Salvador Dali |
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| Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. |
| - Robertson Davies |
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| The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things. |
| - Ernest Dimnet |
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| Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. |
| - Fyodor Dostoevsky |
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| Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self? |
| - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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| The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. |
| - Epictetus |
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| Happiness is a function of accepting what is. |
| - Werner Erhard |
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| Short is the joy that guilty pleasure brings. |
| - Euripides |
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| Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it. |
| - William Feather |
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| A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. |
| - Anatole France |
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| The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. |
| - Benjamin Franklin |
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| Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. |
| - Sigmund Freud |
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| Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. |
| - Robert Frost |
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| Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. |
| - Mahatma Gandhi |
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| I don't necessarily want to be happy; I just want to stop feeling miserable. |
| - Terri Guillemets |
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| Happiness is a direction, not a place. |
| - Sydney J. Harris |
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| Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. |
| - Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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| Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it. |
| - Don Herold |
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| The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. |
| - Eric Hoffer |
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| At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. |
| - Jean Houston |
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| It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed. |
| - Frank Mckinney Hubbard |
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| It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed. |
| - Kin Hubbard |
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| Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved. |
| - Victor Hugo |
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| On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so. |
| - William Ralph Inge |
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| Happiness is a form of courage. |
| - Holbrook Jackson |
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| Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing. |
| - Phil Jackson |
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| Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind. |
| - Thomas Jefferson |
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| Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. |
| - Douglas Jerrold |
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| Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. |
| - Samuel Johnson |
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| Misery is almost always the result of thinking. |
| - Joseph Joubert |
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| Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. |
| - Immanuel Kant |
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| 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. |
| - Helen Keller |
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| We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. |
| - Helen Keller |
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| We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. |
| - Charles Kingsley |
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| We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier. |
| - Walter Savage Landor |
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| Real elation is when you feel you could touch a star without standing on tiptoe. |
| - Doug Larson |
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| The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. |
| - Doug Larson |
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| When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. |
| - Stanislaw J. Lec |
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| The joy of a spirit is the measure of its power. |
| - Ninon de Lenclos |
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| All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh. |
| - Doris Lessing |
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| Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember. |
| - Oscar Levant |
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| Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. |
| - Abraham Lincoln |
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| Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve. |
| - Robert S. Lynd |
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| When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content. |
| - Niccolo Machiavelli |
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| Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness. |
| - Don Marquis |
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| Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money. |
| - Mignon McLaughlin |
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| Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness. |
| - Mignon McLaughlin |
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| We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it. |
| - Mignon McLaughlin |
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| Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. |
| - John Stuart Mill |
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| Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind. |
| - John Stuart Mill |
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| I hate being happy. It pisses me off. Because I know if I try to grab it, it will slip away, like one of those goddamn water snakes. And I hate just looking. I always try to grab. |
| - D.H. Mondfleur |
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| The only time I was truly happy was as a child, before I knew what happiness was - or wasn't. |
| - D.H. Mondfleur |
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| The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it. |
| - Michel de Montaigne |
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| Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age. |
| - Christopher Morley |
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| Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. |
| - Iris Murdoch |
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| All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it! |
| - Bob Newhart |
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| One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers. |
| - Eugene O'Neill |
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| Happiness is a way station between too little and too much. |
| - Channing Pollock |
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| When I do not walk in the clouds I walk as though I were lost. |
| - Antonio Porchia |
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| Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. |
| - Jacques Prévert |
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| Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. |
| - Marcel Proust |
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| One joy scatters a hundred griefs. |
| - Chinese Proverb |
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| Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. |
| - Ayn Rand |
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| Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it. |
| - Francois de la Rochefoucauld |
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| Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. |
| - Eleanor Roosevelt |
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| The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable. |
| - Joseph Roux |
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| Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. |
| - Margaret Lee Runbeck |
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| To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. |
| - Bertrand Russell |
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| If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years. |
| - Bertrand Russell |
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| All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. |
| - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry |
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| If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. |
| - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry |
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| I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. |
| - J.D. Salinger |
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| The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. |
| - J.D. Salinger |
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| Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. |
| - Albert Schweitzer |
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| Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory. |
| - Albert Schweitzer |
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| A man's as miserable as he thinks he is. |
| - Lucius Annaeus Seneca |
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| My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy. |
| - William Shakespeare |
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| Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing. |
| - William Shakespeare |
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| A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth. |
| - George Bernard Shaw |
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| Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not. |
| - George Bernard Shaw |
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| The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. |
| - George Bernard Shaw |
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| We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. |
| - George Bernard Shaw |
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| This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. |
| - George Bernard Shaw |
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| There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. |
| - Logan Pearsall Smith |
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| The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it. |
| - C.P. Snow |
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| When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse. |
| - Sophocles |
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| Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand. |
| - Baruch Spinoza |
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| No man is happy who does not think himself so. |
| - Publilius Syrus |
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| Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. |
| - Thomas Szasz |
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| Happiness is... usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. |
| - Thomas Szasz |
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| The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. |
| - Alfred Lord Tennyson |
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| Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. |
| - Mother Teresa |
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| One filled with joy preaches without preaching. |
| - Mother Teresa |
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| If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. |
| - Henry David Thoreau |
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| Man is the artificer of his own happiness. |
| - Henry David Thoreau |
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| If you want to be happy, be. |
| - Leo Tolstoy |
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| Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. |
| - Mark Twain |
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| The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. |
| - Mark Twain |
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| Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness. |
| - Lao Tzu |
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| If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. |
| - Edith Wharton |
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| My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate. |
| - Thornton Wilder |
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| I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace - a connection to what matters. |
| - Oprah Winfrey |
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| Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. |
| - Margaret Young |
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