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"The chief part of a person's happiness consists of pleasure."
- Thomas More,
Utopia, 1516
"Little is needed to make a wise man
happy, but nothing can content a fool. That is why nearly all men are
miserable."
- La Rochefoucauld
"It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness."
- Charles Spurgeon
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true
happiness.”
- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good
things for the first time.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
“Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get”
- W.P. Kinsella
"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."
- Ingrid Bergman
“The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise.
It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.”
- Ashley Montagu
“There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the
house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window
and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my
children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true
religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel
privileged to lead.”
- Elizabeth Berg
“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
"I would say that happiness is the awareness of an overall and enduring
state of satisfaction in a meaningful existence founded on truth. Obviously,
the contents of this satisfaction vary from one individual to another, and
depend on their sensibility, their aspirations and the phase of their life they
are going through. Without hiding the unpredictable and fragile nature of
happiness, the aim of wisdom is to try and make it as deep and permanent as
possible, irrespective of the ups and downs of existence, external events and
the pleasant or unpleasant events of everyday life."
- Frederic Lenoir
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy;
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
- Marcel Proust
"When happiness was a
matter of pleasure, and pleasure a matter of taste, one could be
happy simply by rolling in filth."
- Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History
"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.
Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace,
and gratitude."
- Denis Waitley
“Happiness is a warm puppy.”
- Charles M. Schulz
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"Happiness is a complex path that becomes easy only as we walk it."
"Enjoy everything that happens in your life, but never make your happiness or
success dependent on an attachment to any person, place, or thing."
- Wayne Dyer
“No medicine cures what happiness cannot.”
- Gabriel Garcia Márquez
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the
overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so
spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of
a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with
temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never
grand.”
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful
to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it
done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature,
books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”
- Leo Tolstoy
“Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as you see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”
“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.”
“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.”
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be
needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to
happiness.”
- Mary Stuart
"So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if
that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are
directed towards attaining it."
- Epicurus
"And now I take my pleasure in my garden. There is a gate but it is
rarely opened. I lean on my staff as I wander about or sit down to rest.
I raise my head and contemplate the lovely scene. Clouds rise,
unwillingly, from the bottom of the hills. The weary bird seeks its nest
again. Shadows vanish, but still I linger around my lonely pine.
Home once more! I’ll have no employment to distract me hence. The
times are out of joint for me; and what have I to seek from men? In the
pure enjoyment of the family circle I will pass my days cheering my idle hours
with lute and book.
Glad is this renewal of life in due season; but for me, I rejoice that my
journey is over. Ah! How short a time it is that we are here!
Why then not set our hearts at rest, ceasing to trouble whether we remain or go?
What benefits it to wear out the soul with anxious thoughts? I want not
wealth. I want not power. Heaven is beyond my hopes. Let me
stroll through the bright hours as they pass, in my garden, among my flowers.
Or, I will mount the hill and sing my song; or weave my verse beside the limpid
brook. Thus will I work out my allotted span, content with the
appointments of fate, my spirit free from care."
- T'ao Yung-Ming, 450 BCE
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
- Aristotle
“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“I
believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring
immediate and long-term happiness to our lives.”
- Dalai Lama
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you
didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from
the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
- Mark Twain
“Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t
know they were going to be.”
- Joseph Campbell
“Whoever is happy will make others happy.”
- Anne Frank
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the
candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
- Buddha
“Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be
happy.”
- Guillaume Apollinaire
"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?"
“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, Zorba the Greek
"To
be happy, we must not be too concerned with others."
- Albert Camus
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be
a merrier world.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien
"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
"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of
balance, order, rhythm and harmony."
- Thomas Merton
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
“Worry
never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy.”
- Leo Buscaglia
“A
well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your
steps as you walk the tightrope of life.”
- William Arthur Ward
"I am determined to be cheerful and happy in
whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater
part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by
our disposition."
- Martha Washington
“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight
for your happiness.”
- Ayn Rand
“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 trick is in what one emphasizes. We
either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of
work is the same.”
- Carlos Castaneda
“Expectations make people miserable, so
whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier.”
- Simone Elkeles
“Happiness consists of living each day as if it
were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.”
- Leo Tolstoy
“Most people are about as happy as they make up
their minds to be.”
- Abraham Lincoln
"As I go through all kinds of feelings and experiences in my journey through life -- delight, surprise, chagrin, dismay -- I hold this question as a guiding light: 'What do I really need right now to be happy?' What I come to over and over again is that only qualities as vast and deep as love, connection and kindness will really make me happy in any sort of enduring way."
“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
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks
in length.”
- Robert Frost
“Sometimes life knocks you on your ass... get
up, get up, get up!!! Happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the
ability to deal with them.”
- Steve Maraboli
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Feeling Fitness Five Senses Friendship Gardening Generosity
Happiness Hedonism Hospitality Independence Kindness Learning Links
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Patience Philosophy Play Pleasures Qigong Self-Reliance
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“If
you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the
sunshine.”
- Morris West
“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy."
- Milton Erickson
"What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful."
"Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results."
- Dennis Waitley
"At the same time, as the great Scottish
philosopher David Hume notes, "The great end of all human industry, is the
attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated,
laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots
and legislators." The whole of history is made up of dreams or utopias
drawn up by individuals and societies. It is because human beings have
sought a better life and done all in their power to achieve it that all the
progress of mankind has been accomplished. The same is true of our
personal lives: it's because we want to make progress, to be happier, that our
lives improve and give us ever more satisfaction. The obsession with
happiness or the quest for a too-perfect happiness can produce the opposite
result. The art of happiness consists entirely in not setting goals that
are too high, unattainable and overwhelming. It's a good idea to set more
gradual goals, to reach them step by step, to persevere without getting stressed
while being able sometimes to let go and accept life's failures and ups and
downs. Montaigne and the Taoist sages understood this clearly and
expressed it well: we need to allow our attention to act effortlessly; never to
confront a situation with the aim of forcing it; to be able to act and not to
act. In short, to hope for happiness and pursue it while being supple and
patient, without any excessive expectations, without stress, with hearts and
minds in a state of constant openness."
-
Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide.
By Frederic Lenoir, p. 106.
“There is only one way to happiness and that is
to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
- Epictetus
"One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child."
"Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving an impact on
people, brings happiness."
- Harold Kushner
"People don't notice whether it's winter or
summer when they are happy."
- Anton Chekhov
"Happiness is when what you think, what you
say, and what you do are in harmony."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
“Love is
that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to
your own.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
“And therein lies the whole of man's plight.
Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line.
That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.”
- Milan Kunders
“Memory is the happiness of being alone.”
- Lois Lowry
“It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.”
-
Lucille Ball
“Don’t
underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening
to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”
-
Winnie the Pooh
"We really can be happier if we think about our lives, if we
work on ourselves, if we learn to make more sensible decisions, or indeed if we
alter our thoughts, our beliefs, or the way we imagine ourselves in the world.
The great paradox of happiness is that it can be tamed while still remaining
essentially beyond our control. Happiness is a matter of fate and chance;
but it can also stem from a rational, deliberate approach."
- Frederic Lenoir, Happiness
“Happiness is an accident of nature, a
beautiful and flawless aberration.”
- Pat Conroy
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of
life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
- Aristotle
“Optimism
is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people
will be drawn to you.”
- Mary Lou Retton
“Everyone
wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth
occurs while you’re climbing it.”
- Andy Rooney
“The
foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his
feet.”
- James Oppenheim
“The secret of happiness is not in doing what
one likes, but in liking what one does.”
- J. M. Barrie
“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good
health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is
lacking, the others are useless.”
- Julian Barnes
“Action
may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without
action.”
- Benjamin Disraeli
“
“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an
allegory, unhappiness a story.”
- Haruki Murakami
"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
“All happiness depends on courage and work.”
- Honoré de Balzac
“The
deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the
potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very
wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is
only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you
are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that
you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
- Kahlil Gibran
“The
happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific
about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total
responsibility for every part of their life.”
- Brian Tracy
“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
“Just because you are happy it does not mean
that the day is perfect but that you have looked beyond its imperfections.”
- Bob Marley
“The first
recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.”
- Andre Maurois
“The grand essentials to happiness in this life
are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
- George Washington Burnap
“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
“Very little is needed to make
a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
- Marcus Aurelius
“Man only likes to count his troubles; he
doesn't calculate his happiness.”
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Many people think excitement is happiness.
But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on
peace.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh
“Only the development of compassion and
understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all
seek.”
- Dalai Lama XIV
“Art is unquestionably one of the purest and
highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye,
and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color
life.”
- John Lubbock
“There is only one way to happiness and that is
to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”
- Epictetus
“There are two ways to be happy: improve your
reality, or lower your expectations.”
- Jodi Picoult
“Later she remembered all the hours of the
afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only
a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure
itself.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence─ where
you don't water.”
- Mike Garofalo, Pulling
Onions
"1) We often exaggerate in imagining the long-term emotional
effects certain events will have on us. 2) Most of us tend to have a basic
level of happiness which we revert to eventually. 3) People generally err
in imagining what will make them happy. 4) People tend to find ways of
rationalizing unhappy outcomes so as to make them more acceptable to themselves.
5) People tend to repeat the same errors in imagining what will make them happy.
6) Events and outcomes which we dread may when they come about turn into new
opportunities for happiness. 7) Many of the most productive and creative
people are those who are continually unhappy with the world- and thus strive to
change it. 8) Happiness is rarely as good as we imagine it to be, and
rarely lasts as long as we think it will. The same mistaken expectations
apply to unhappiness."
- Shalom Freedman's review of
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Recommended Reading:
By Epicurus. Translation and commentary by George K. Strodach. Penguin Classics,
2012. 272 pages.
The Conquest of Happiness By Bertrand Russell.
Introduction by Daniel Dennett. Liveright, 1930, 2013. 224 pages.
Epicurean and Hedonistic Philosophy:
Bibliography, Resources, Quotations, Information
Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction
Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide.
By Frederic Lenoir. Melville
House, 2015. 208 pages.
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding
Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.
By Jonathan Haidt. Basic
Books, 2006. 320 pages.
Happiness: A History
Hedonism:
Bibliography, Links, Quotations, Resources, Notes
The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want
How
to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons
Life's Little Instruction Book By H. Jackson Brown, Jr. Thomas
Nelson, Revised edition, 2000. 160 pages.
Nicomachean Ethics
On Desire: Why We Want What We Want
Pleasures, Desires and Enjoyment: Quotations,
Poems, Sayings
By Robert Grudin. Mariner Books, 1997. Index, 250 pages. ISBN:
978039689814. VSCL.
By Daniel Klein. New York,
Penguin Books, 2012. 164
pages.
Cloud Hands Blog. By Michael P. Garofalo. Over 2,400 indexed posts on well being, philosophy, somaesthetics, taijiquan, qigong, walking, gardening, yoga, Taoism, hedonism, and spirituality. Over 700,000 page views as of 6/1/2016.
Advice Beauty Bibliography Blog Body-Mind Broad Minded Cheerfulness
Contemplation Desires Dharmapada Sutra Education Epicureanism Equanimity
Feeling Fitness Five Senses Friendship Gardening Generosity
Happiness Hedonism Hospitality Independence Kindness Learning Links
Meditation Memory Mindfulness Moderation Open Minded Paramitas
Patience Philosophy Play Pleasures Qigong Reading Self-Reliance
Sensory Pleasures Simplicity Solitude Somaesthetics Stoicism Taijiquan
Tao Te Ching Thinking Tolerance Touching Tranquility Vigor Vision
Walking Willpower Wisdom Wonder Zen Precepts
Michael P. Garofalo, A Brief Biography
Green Way Research, Vancouver, Washington
This webpage was last modified, edited, improved, changed or updated on
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This webpage was first distributed online on February 26, 2014.
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