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happiness - happiness
2 - happiness
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There
can be no happiness if the
things we believe in
are different
from the things we do.
Freya Madeline Stark
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It is not
the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but
the kinship of
heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both
attitudes are within our power, so that people are happy
so long as
they choose to be happy, and no one can stop them.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Happiness
is a present attitude--not a future condition.
Hugh
Prather
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The
people who are unhappy when they are poor would be unhappy
if
they were rich, and they who are happy in a palace in Paris
would be
happy
in a dug-out on the frontier of Dakota.
There are
as many
unhappy rich people as there are unhappy poor
people. Every heart
knows its own bitterness and its own joy. Not that wealth and what
it brings is not desirable—books,
travel, leisure, comfort, the best food
and clothing,
agreeable
companionship—but all these do not necessarily
bring happiness and
may coexist with the deepest wretchedness,
while adversity and penury,
exile and privation
are not incompatible with
the loftiest exaltation
of the soul.
John J. Ingalls
The foolish person seeks happiness in the
distance;
the wise grow it under their feet.
James Oppenheim
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A
happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be
found;
for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is
not big enough to
make us happy.
Thomas Merton
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The
art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging
to a
particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to
change
its form. . .
happiness, like a child, must be allowed
to grow up.
Charles
L. Morgan
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Every
day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies
in
the love we have not given, the powers we have not used,
the
selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which,
shirking
pain, misses happiness as well.
Mary
Cholmondeley
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We
can make countless journeys to
find happiness, and engage
in countless
strategies to rid ourselves of unhappiness,
but the
key traveler on all the journeys
and the central player in all the
strategies
is ourselves, and it is to ourselves we
always return. . . .
We discover happiness
through making peace with ourselves and
the circumstances of our lives, not through
trying to escape from
them, nor through
living in fantasies about the future.
Christina
Feldman
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We
act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements
of life, when all that we need to make us really happy
is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley |
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The
real secret of happiness is simply this: to be willing to live and
let
live, and to know very clearly in one's own mind that
the unpardonable
sin
is to be an unpleasant person.
Galen Starr Ross |
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Happiness is the greatest paradox in nature.
It can grow in any soil,
live under any conditions. It defies environment. The
reason for this
is that it does not come from without but from within. Whenever
you see people seeking happiness outside themselves, you can be sure
they have never yet found it.
Forman Lincicome |
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happiness - happiness
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Someone
once asked me what I regarded as the three most important
requirements for happiness.
My answer was: “A feeling that you have
been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have
done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work;
and the ability to love others.”
Eleanor Roosevelt |
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Happiness
in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.
Make it
the object of pursuit, and it leads us on 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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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When we
recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy,
that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home
can be surprisingly simple. We
have enormous power not to manipulate
the world, but to be happy and to know peace.
Hugh
Prather
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Every
morning when we wake up we’ve been given a wonderful
gift—another day of life—so let’s make the most of it.
No one
can do it for us. . . . Genuine happiness can only be realized
once
we commit to making it a personal priority in our lives.
This may be
a new behavior for some of us and a bit intimidating.
Be gentle with
yourself.
It will all unfold.
Like any new behavior, happiness can be learned.
Sarah
Ban Breathnach
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Very little is needed to make a happy life.
It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Marcus Aurelius
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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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Begin
each morning by resolving to find something in the day
to
enjoy. Look into each experience which comes
to you for some grain of
happiness.
unattributed
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Happiness is only available with total
acceptance of who you are,
including all your fears, worries, and anxiety. It will
be there for you
when you can see your own inner beauty. You cannot
achieve happiness
without using your past, your flaws, insecurities, and
imperfections in a
positive way. It is about letting go and detaching from
unhealthy people,
ideas, and lifestyle choices, and replacing them with
interdependent,
pro-active ways of thinking and responding.
Lucinda Bassett |
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Why
should the search for happiness be only or essentially
material and mental? Aren’t there untold riches too
in the moral, the sentimental
and the spiritual realms?
Robert Muller |
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No
matter what may be one's nationality, sex, age,
philosophy, or religion, everyone wishes either to
become or remain happy. Hence definitions of
happiness are interesting. One of the best was
given in my senior year at college by President
Timothy Dwight. "The happiest person is the
person who thinks the most interesting thoughts."
This definition places happiness where it
belongs--within and not without. The principle
of happiness should be like the principle of
virtue: it should not be dependent upon things,
but be a part of personality.
If the happiest person is the person who thinks the
most interesting thoughts, we are bound to grow
happier as we advance in years, because our minds have
more and more interesting thoughts. A
well-ordered life is like climbing a tower; the view
halfway up is better than the view from the base, and
it steadily becomes finer as the horizon expands.
William Lyon Phelps |
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No mockery in the world ever sounds to me as
hollow as that of
being told to
cultivate happiness. . . . Happiness is not a
potato, to be planted in mold, and tilled with manure.
Charlotte Bronte |
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"Take
my own father! You know what he said in his last
moments?
On his deathbed, he defied me to name a man who had enjoyed a
better life. In spite of the dreadful pain, his face radiated
happiness,"
said Mother, nodding her head comfortably.
"Happiness drives
out pain, as fire burns out fire."
Mary Lavin |
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Happiness
is a choice that requires effort at times.
unattributed |
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To describe happiness is to diminish it.
Henri Strendhal |
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The
necessity of pursuing true happiness is the foundation of all
liberty--
Happiness, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure we are
capable of.
John Locke |
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Do
not let a desire for wealth cause you to become so consumed by
your work that you prevent happiness for yourself and your
family
in the present moment. Happiness is foremost.
A look filled with understanding, an accepting smile, a loving
word,
a meal shared in warmth and awareness are the things which
create
happiness in the present moment. By nourishing awareness
in the
present moment, you can avoid causing suffering to yourself
and those
around you. The way you look at others, your smile, and
your small
acts of caring can create happiness. True happiness
does not depend on wealth or fame.
Thich Nhat
Hanh
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Happiness
is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will
avoid you, it will never come. But if you pay no
attention to it
and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against
your legs and jumping into your lap.
William Bennett
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There
is great happiness in not wanting, in not being
something, in not going somewhere.
J. Krishnamurti |
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Humankind is interdependent, and the happiness
of each depends
upon the happiness of all, and it is this lesson that humanity
has to
learn today as the first and last lesson.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
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For
the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign
indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself,
indeed so
brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy,
and that I was happy still.
Albert Camus |
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I
have lived large parts of my life in wonderful circumstances
that I utterly
failed to appreciate. Reasons to be happy were
everywhere, but somehow I
didn't connect with them. It was as though I was eating
but couldn't taste
the food. Finally, I've learned to celebrate the good
while it's happening.
I feel gratitude and praise today for what are sometimes such
simple pleasures.
I have learned that happiness is not determined by
circumstances. Happiness
is not what happens when everything goes the way you think it
should go;
happiness is what happens when you decide to be happy.
Marianne
Williamson
Everyday
Grace |
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happiness - happiness
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Those
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.
Horace
Mann |
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The
tragedy of too many people is that they cannot allow happiness
just to be there; they cannot leave it alone. Their
sense of who they
are and of what their destiny is cannot accommodate happiness.
So they are drive to find ways to sabotage it.
Nathaniel
Branden
Self-Esteem
Every Day
In order to fight for our happiness, we must
consider ourselves worthy of happiness. |
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The belief that unhappiness is selfless and
happiness is selfish is
misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy,
generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet
everyone takes the happy people for granted. No one is
careful of their feelings or tries to keep their spirits high.
They seem
self-sufficient; they become a cushion for others. And because
happiness seems unforced, those people usually gets no credit.
Gretchen Rubin
The Happiness Project |
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A
choice of ultimate happiness in preference to proximate
happiness,
when the element of chance is given due consideration, is, I
believe,
the wisest course for people to follow under the sun.
Those that
choose proximate happiness are brutes; those who choose
immortal
happiness are asses; but those who choose ultimate
happiness know their business.
Jack London |
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The
habit of being uniformly considerate toward others will
bring increased happiness to you. As you put into
practice
the qualities of patience, punctuality, sincerity, and
solicitude,
you will have a better opinion of the world around you.
Grenville Kleiser |
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The
paths by which people journey toward happiness lie in part
through
the world about them and in part through the experience of
their own soul.
Carl Hilty |
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Happy
people are not their own enemies, do not carry on an endless
war with their souls. We may be fiercely at odds with
the wrongs of
the world around us. But inside ourselves, near the
core,
if we are happy, we are at peace.
Lewis B. Smedes |
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One
of the best ways to worship
God
is simply to be happy.
Traditional
Hindu saying |
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quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
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up for your free daily meditation
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I'm
happier. I guess I made up my mind to be that way.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson |
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Happiness is not a
state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling.
Samuel Johnson |
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An
effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above
ourselves.
Lydia Maria Child |
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Happiness is a reward for worthy services to others, for heroic
endeavor in trying to do our part in the world, to perform our
duty. There must be the desire to be helpful, to make the world
a better place to live in, because of our efforts. Little kindnesses,
pleasant words, little helps by the way, trifling courtesies, little
encouragements, duties faithfully done, unselfish service, work
that we enjoy, friendships, love and affection—all these are simple
things, yet this, perhaps, is as near as we can come to
finding and
capturing elusive Happiness.
Orison
Swett Marden
The Joys of Living |
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The Art of Happiness
There was never a time when so much official effort was being expended to
produce happiness, and probably never a time when so little attention was
paid by the individual to creating the personal qualities that make for it.
What one misses most today is the evidence of widespread personal
determination to develop a character that will, in itself, given any
reasonable odds, make for happiness. Our whole emphasis is on the reform of
living conditions, of increased wages, of controls on the economic
structure--the government approach--and so little on people improving
themselves.
The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one
hand. Happiness comes from within, and rests most securely on simple
goodness and clear conscience. Religion may not be essential to it, but no
one is known to have gained it without a philosophy resting on ethical
principles. Selfishness is its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy
one's self. It is quiet, seldom found for long in crowds, most easily won in
moments of solitude and reflection. It cannot be bought; indeed, money has
very little to do with it.
No one is happy unless they are reasonably well
satisfied with themselves, so that the quest for tranquility must of necessity
begin with self-examination. We shall not often be content with what we
discover in this scrutiny. There is much to do, and so little done.
Upon
this searching self-analysis, however, depends the discovery of those
qualities that make each person unique, and whose development alone can bring
satisfaction.
Of all those who have tried, down the ages, to outline a
program for happiness, few have succeeded so well as William Henry Channing,
chaplain of the House of Representatives in the middle of the last century:
"To live content with small means; so seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy . . . to study hard, think
quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to the stars and birds, to
babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurry never; in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and
unconscious, grow up through the common."
It will be noted that no
government can do this for you; you must do it for yourself.
William S. Ogdon
New York Times, 12/30/1945
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