The 157 Best Quotes About Happiness

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Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.― Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness, in the context of mental or emotional states, is positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Other forms include life satisfaction, well-being, subjective well-being, flourishing and eudaimonia.

Here is a selection of some of the most inspiring quotes about happiness in life. Short quotes on happiness. Positive life quotes. Self happiness sayings. Quotes and sayings about happiness and love. True happiness quotes.



The best quotes and sayings on happiness

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

― Mahatma Gandhi

The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

― Chuck Palahniuk

Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.

― Dale Carnegie

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.


Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

― Aristotle

I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.

― Alexandre Dumas

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.

― Edward Lear

Smile more. Smiling can make you and others happy.

― Roy T. Bennett

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.


The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

― C.S. Lewis

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

― William James

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.

― Marcus Aurelius

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

― Ayn Rand

You must be the best judge of your own happiness.

― Jane Austen

Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?

― Markus Zusak

Happiness is a state of activity.

― Aristotle

Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

― Immanuel Kant

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

― Sigmund Freud

A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.

― Dalai Lama XIV

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

― Boethius

There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.

― George Sand

There is no path to happiness; happiness is the path.

― Buddha

Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well-lived.

― Eleanor Roosevelt

Don't worry. Be happy.

― Bobby McFerrin

Do not set aside your happiness. Do not wait to be happy in the future. The best time to be happy is always now.

― Roy T. Bennett

I have chosen to be happy because it's good for my health.

― Voltaire

Others may know pleasure, but pleasure is not happiness. It has no more importance than a shadow following a man.

― Muhammad Ali

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

― Buddha

Every day is a new day, and you'll never be able to find happiness if you don't move on.

― Carrie Underwood

The thing everyone should realize is that the key to happiness is being happy by yourself and for yourself.

― Ellen DeGeneres

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

― Benjamin Franklin

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

No medicine cures what happiness cannot.

― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Spend your life with people who make you smile, laugh, and feel loved.

― Roy T. Bennett

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

― J.R.R. Tolkien

The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.

― Bette Midler

I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

― Douglas Adams

Happiness depends on your mindset and attitude.

― Roy T. Bennett

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

― Aristotle

Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.

― Pat Conroy

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.

― Louisa May Alcott

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

― Dalai Lama XIV

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.


One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

― Aristotle

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

― Thomas Hardy

Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.

― Epicurus

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.

― Dalai Lama XIV

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.

― Dale Carnegie

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.

― Sri Ramana Maharshi

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

― Leo Tolstoy

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

― Omar Khayyam

A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.


Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

― Robert A. Heinlein

Happiness is a warm puppy.

― Charles M. Schulz

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

― Haruki Murakami

Happiness is only real when shared.

― Jon Krakauer

Stop comparing yourself to other people, just choose to be happy and live your own life.

― Roy T. Bennett

All happiness depends on courage and work.

― Honore de Balzac

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.

― Charlotte Bronte

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

― Robert Frost

The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.

― Carrie Jones

I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.

― Drew Barrymore

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true.

― Audrey Hepburn

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who do not know how to see the precious things in life will never be happy.

― Alex Flinn

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.

― Epictetus

Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.

― Thomas Mann

Comparison is the thief of joy.

― Theodore Roosevelt

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

― Socrates

Happiness is like those palaces in fairytales whose gates are guarded by dragons: We must fight in order to conquer it.

― Alexandre Dumas

The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.

― Desiderius Erasmus

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

― Mother Theresa

Happiness is a state of mind. It’s just according to the way you look at things.

― Walt Disney

Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.

― Benjamin Franklin

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.

― Andrew Carnegie

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

― Nhat Hanh

Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.


Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people's hands.

― Roy T. Bennett

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

― Jonathan Safran Foer

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

― Marcus Aurelius

Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.

― Orhan Pamuk

Happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the ability to deal with them.

― Steve Maraboli

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

― Rita Mae Brown

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

― Guillaume Apollinaire

Whoever is happy will make others happy.

― Anne Frank

If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

― Edith Wharton

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy".

― Sylvia Plath

Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.

― Andy Rooney

They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us-there is no life.

― Leo Tolstoy

Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.

― Aeschylus

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance. The wise grows it under his feet.

― James Oppenheim

Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

― George Washington

Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

― Helen Keller

Happiness doesn't depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel toward what we have. We can be happy with little and miserable with much.

― William D. Hoard

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

― Charles Dickens

Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.

― Ralph Marston

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

― Dalai Lama XIV

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

― George Burns

You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes.

― Lauren Oliver

I've got nothing to do today but smile.

― Simon and Garfunkel

Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.

― Steve Maraboli

It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

― Dale Carnegie

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

― Tom Bodett

Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure.

― Arthur Schopenhauer

Laughter is poison to fear.

― George R.R. Martin

Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.

― Edmund Burke

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

― Nikos Kazantzakis

Nothing makes a person happier than having a happy heart.

― Roy T. Bennett

Happiness doesn't result from what we get, but from what we give.

― Ben Carson

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.

― James Matthew Barrie

Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.

― Honore de Balzac

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

― Marcel Proust

Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.

― Mary Lou Retton

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects.

― Albert Einstein

Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy with what you have.

― Zig Ziglar

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

― Helen Keller

Don't waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.

― Roy T. Bennett

The most important thing is to enjoy your life, to be happy, it's all that matters.

― Audrey Hepburn

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

― Bertrand Russell

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.

― Ayn Rand

I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.

― Jane Austen

It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.

― Lucy Maud Montgomery

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

― Daphne Du Maurier

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

― Chuck Palahniuk

Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called All the Things That Could Go Wrong.

― Marianne Williamson

Happiness is a risk. If you're not a little scared, then you're not doing it right.

― Sarah Addison Allen

Just because you are happy it does not mean that the day is perfect but that you have looked beyond its imperfections.

― Bob Marley

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

― Albert Camus

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

― Franklin D. Roosevelt

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

― Aldous Huxley

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

― Albert Schweitzer

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

― John Stuart Mill

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

― Socrates

The secret of happiness, you see is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

― Socrates

Happiness belongs to the self sufficient.

― Aristotle

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

― Ernest Hemingway

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

― John Lennon

If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.

― Roy T. Bennett

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

― Marcel Proust

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

― Mark Twain

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.


Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.

― John Barrymore

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

― Buddha

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

― Thomas Merton

Always find opportunities to make someone smile, and to offer random acts of kindness in everyday life.

― Roy T. Bennett

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

― Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

― F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.

― Elizabeth Gilbert

Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.

― Ann Brashares

The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.


I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.

― Jane Austen

Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have.

― Doris Mortman

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

― Seneca


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