30 Quotes to Boost Your Happiness
This collection of quotes from authors, thinkers, comedians, and philosophers may help you understand what happiness can be.
Happiness is one of the six basic emotions shared by all people, regardless of cultural background, age, gender, or other demographic characteristics (Ekman, 1992). Despite the universal nature of happiness, it can often feel out of reach. For as long as people have been writing things down, they’ve been contemplating happiness - how to get happy, how to stay happy, and what it means to be happy. What follows is a collection of quotes, ancient through to modern, all offering their own words of wisdom and perspectives on happiness. Read on to see if any of these words of wisdom speak to you.
“Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.” ― Rose Wilder Lane
“When I find myself focusing overmuch on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal, I remind myself to 'Enjoy now'. If I can enjoy the present, I don't need to count on the happiness that is (or isn't) waiting for me in the future".” ― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” ― Franz Kafka
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” ― Albert Camus
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
“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, The Bell Jar
“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.” ― Pearl S. Buck
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“Happiness is a state of activity.” ― Aristotle
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” ― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” ― Dr. Seuss
“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” ― Victor Hugo , Les Misérables
“One of the great joys of falling in love is the feeling that the most extraordinary person in the entire world has chosen you.” ― Gretchen Rubin
Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” ― Abraham Lincoln
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ― Dalai Lama XIV
“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” ― Hunter S. Thompson
“Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.” ― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“The ninety and nine are with dreams, content, but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.” ― John Lennon
“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.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“The best kind of laughter is laughter born of a shared memory.” ― Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?
“Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.” ― African Proverb
“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” ― George Burns
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” ― Oscar Wilde
“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” ― Mark Twain
“I was happy as a clam. But who wants to be a clam?” ― Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality
In Sum
How do we find happiness and then keep it? The collection of quotes above suggests that happiness can be reached in so many different ways—from accomplishing great things to enjoying the little things, from being true to yourself, to serving others. All of these represent different potential pathways to happiness. I hope that after reading through these quotes you feel inspired to find and create your own happiness, whatever that means to you.
References
● Ekman, P. (1992). Are there basic emotions? Psychological Review, 99(3), 550–553.