About Happiness

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)
The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.
Al Batt, in National Enquirer
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
Anatole France (1844 - 1924)
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755 - 1826), Physiologie du Gout, 1825
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Baruch Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
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 (1872 - 1970)
All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!
Bob Newhart (1929 - )
The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
C. P. Snow (1905 - 1980)
Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.
Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)
This is the best kind of voyeurism, hearing joy from your neighbors.
Chuck Sigars, The World According to Chuck weblog, October 14, 2003
Sometimes it's hard to avoid the happiness of others.
David Assael, Northern Exposure, Our Tribe, 1992
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
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 (1892 - 1964)
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), "Man and Superman" (1903), act I
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns (1896 - 1996)
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)
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 (1880 - 1968)
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Journal, January 21, 1838
If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us least live so as to deserve it.
Immanuel Hermann Fichte
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
J. D. Salinger (1919 - )
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
James Oppenheim
At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
Jean Houston
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)
The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.
John Berry, Flight of White Crows
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 (1672 - 1719), The Spectator, March 17, 1911
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
Josh Billings (1818 - 1885)