Last Updated on December 20, 2022 by Andrew Shih
People are used to pursuing things such as a money, fame, power, a good job, or a good life.
But how do you pursue happiness? Happiness is not a thing that you need to search for externally – happiness comes from within yourself.
According to VeryWellMind, “Happiness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment. While happiness has many different definitions, it is often described as involving positive emotions and life satisfaction.”
Simply being grateful for what you have and every little thing that you may have taken for granted, and you will be instantly happier.
Happiness is within your mind and how you think. You are capable and have the full power to take control of your happiness. Here are 200 happiness quotes to brighten your day and enrich your life.
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Happiness Quotes: A ~ F
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
— George Bernard Shaw
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
— Helen Keller
A mathematical formula for happiness: Reality divided by Expectations. There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality or lower your expectations.
— Jodi Picoult
A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour.
— Mitzi Dulan
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.’
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
All happiness depends on courage and work.
— Honoré de Balzac
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.
— John F. Kennedy
At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
— Albert Schweitzer
Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.
— Roy T. Bennett
Be grateful for what you already have while you pursue your goals. If you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more.
— Roy T. Bennett
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
— Omar Khayyam
Be happy with what you have while working for what you want.
— Helen Keller
Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want.
— Alan Cohen
Be happy. It really annoys negative people.
— Ricky Gervais
Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.
— Colette
Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
— Oprah Winfrey
Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
— Gerard Way
Being happy is not the only happiness.
— Alice Walker
Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
— Norman Vincent Peale
Changing your outside world cannot make you happy if you are an unhappy person. The real personal change can only happen from the inside out. If you firstly create the change within yourself, you can turn your life around.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.
— Steve Maraboli
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
Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.
— Frank Tyger
Doing what you were born to do… That’s the way to be happy.
— Agnes Martin
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
— Ludwig Jacobowski
Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.
— Roy T. Bennett
Don’t let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It’s your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don’t let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are.
— Roy T. Bennett
Enjoy it. Because it’s happening.
— Stephen Chbosky
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
— Carl Jung
Even if you cannot change all the people around you, you can change the people you choose to be around. Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you. Spend your life with people who make you smile, laugh, and feel loved.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Every second you have on this planet is very precious and it’s your responsibility that you’re happy.
— Naval Ravikant
Everybody in the world is seeking happiness—and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Everything is a gift of the universe,even joy, anger, jealousy, frustration, or separateness. Everything is perfect either for our growth or our enjoyment.
— Ken Keyes Jr.
Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
— Abraham Lincoln
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness Quotes: H
Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
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 comes from peace. Peace comes from indifference.
— Naval Ravikant
Happiness depends on your mindset and attitude.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
— Aristotle
Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.
— Aristotle
Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.
— David Steindl-Rast
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness is a choice and a skill and you can dedicate yourself to learning that skill and making that choice.
— Naval Ravikant
Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.
— Mildred Barthel
Happiness is a direction, not a place.
— Sydney J. Harris
Happiness is a form of courage.
— Holbrook Jackson
Happiness is a function of accepting what is.
— Werner Erhard
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 place between too much and too little.
— Finnish proverb
Happiness is a state where nothing is missing.
— Naval Ravikant
Happiness is always the serendipitous result of looking for something else.
— Dr. Idel Dreimer
Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.
— Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline
Happiness is an inside job.
— William Arthur Ward
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
— George Burns
Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.
— Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and enjoying it for everything that it is.
— Mandy Hale
Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
— Daphne Du Maurier
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
— Margaret Lee Runbeck
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
— Immanuel Kant
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
— Thomas Jefferson
Happiness is not having what you want. It is appreciating what you have.
— Unknown
Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
— Norman MacEwan
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
— Dalai Lama
Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments. Rather happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.
— Yuval Noah Harari
Happiness is only real when shared.
— Jon Krakauer
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.
— Ayn Rand
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
— Zhuangzi
Happiness is the default state. It’s what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing in life.
— Naval Ravikant
Happiness is the experience of loving life. Being happy is being in love with that momentary experience. And love is looking at someone or even something and seeing the absolute best in him or her or it. Love is happiness with what you see. So love and happiness really are the same thing … just expressed differently.
— Robert McPhillips
Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.
— Don Marquis
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
— Aristotle
Happiness is the natural flower of duty.
— Phillips Brooks
Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other.
— Norman Bradburn
Happiness is usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
— Thomas Szasz
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. –
— Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is where we find it, but very rarely where we seek it.
— J. Petit Senn
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
— Robert Frost
Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.
— Walt Whitman
Happiness: A butterfly, which when pursued, seems always just beyond your grasp; but if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
— Daily Crescent
Happiness: a way station between too little and too much.
— Channing Pollock
Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory.
— Albert Schweitzer
Happiness Quotes: I ~R
I am very happy because I have conquered myself and not the world. I am very happy because I have loved the world and not myself.
— Sri Chinmoy
I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.
—Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
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
I have only two kinds of days: happy and hysterically happy.
— Allen J. Lefferdink
I now tried a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be.
— Michelle Obama
I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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 would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
— G.K. Chesterton
I’d far rather be happy than right any day.
— Douglas Adams
If we would just slow down, happiness would catch up to us.
— Richard Carlson
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
— Mother Teresa
If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you.
— Lao Tzu
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.
— Chinese proverb
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
— Dalai Lama
If you want to be happy, be.
— Leo Tolstoy
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, The Light in the Heart
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.
— Andrew Carnegie
If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.
— Albert Einstein
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
In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.
— Albert Clarke
In our lives, change is unavoidable, loss is unavoidable. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change, lies our happiness and freedom.
— Buddha
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
It is difficult to live in and enjoy the moment when you are thinking about the past or worrying about the future. You cannot change your past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about your future. Learn from the past, plan for the future. The more you live in and enjoy the present moment, the happier you will be.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.
— Charles Spurgeon
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, How to Win Friends and Influence People
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
It’s the moments that I stopped just to be, rather than do, that have given me true happiness.
— Richard Branson
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
— Maya Angelou
Learn to be happy with the endless try/fail/learn approach. True growth is slow and steady.
— Maxime Lagacé
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
— Ayn Rand
Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
— Marcel Proust
Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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
Money doesn’t bring happiness and creativity. Your creativity and happiness bring money.
— Sam Rosen
Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.
— William Adams
No medicine cures what happiness cannot.
— Gabriel García Márquez
Nothing makes a person happier than having a happy heart.
— Roy T. Bennett
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
— Guillaume Apollinaire
On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.
— William R. Inge
One happiness scatters a thousand sorrows.
— Chinese proverb
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
— Rita Mae Brown
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression, and respect.
— Alain de Botton
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
— Thomas Jefferson
People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat–that’s the only moral they know.
— Dany Laferrière
People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.
— Anton Chekhov
People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
— Dalai Lama
Perfectionism is the enemy of happiness. Embrace being perfectly imperfect. Learn from your mistakes and forgive yourself, you’ll be happier. We make mistakes because we are imperfect. Learn from your mistakes, forgive yourself, and keep moving forward.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
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
Real happiness is not of temporary enjoyment, but is so interwoven with the future that it blesses forever.
— James Lendall Basford
Happiness Quotes: S ~ Z
Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.
— Osho Rajneesh
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.
— Mark Twain
Smile more. Smiling can make you and others happy.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Sometimes we don’t find the thing that will make us happy because we can’t give up the thing that was supposed to.
— Robert Brault
Stop comparing yourself to other people, just choose to be happy and live your own life.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Stop giving other people the power to control your happiness, your mind, and your life. If you don’t take control of yourself and your own life, someone else is bound to try.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.
— W. P. Kinsella
Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature, and God. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, then there will be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be.
— Anne Frank
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.
— Mark Twain
The constant happiness is curiosity.
— Alice Munro
The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest.
— Unknown
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
— James Oppenheim
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
— George Washington Burnap
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
— William Saroyan
The greatest secret to happiness and peace is letting every life situation be what it is, instead of what you think it should be. Then, make the very best of it.
— Thibaut
The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
— Marcus Aurelius
The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.
— Audrey Hepburn
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.
— Laura Ingalls Wilder
The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.
— Carrie Jones
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
— Carl Sandburg
The secret to happiness is to put the burden of proof on unhappiness.
— Robert Brault
The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.
— William Morris
There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.
— Jodi Picoult
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
— Freya Stark
There is great happiness in not wanting, in not being something, in not going somewhere.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
— Lady Blessington
There is only one happiness in life – to love and to be loved.
— George Sand
There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.
— C. JoyBell C.
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
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.
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
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
— Joseph Addison
To be happy, you must fancy that everything you have is a gift, and you the chosen, though you worked your tail off for every bit of it.
— Robert Brault
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
— Gustave Flaubert
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
— Bertrand Russell
True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self.
— Joseph Addison
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
— Helen Keller
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.
— Golda Meir
Usefulness is happiness, and… all other things are but incidental.
— Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
— Marcus Aurelius
We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
— Thomas Merton
We can’t control the world. We can only (barely) control our own reactions to it. Happiness is largely a choice, not a right or entitlement.
— David C. Hill
We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.
— William James
What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
— John Lennon
When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –
— Helen Keller
When you do the right thing, you get the feeling of peace and serenity associated with it. Do it again and again.
— Roy T. Bennett
Whoever is happy will make others happy.
— Anne Frank
Work hard and don’t give up hope. Be open to criticism and keep learning. Surround yourself with happy, warm and genuine people.
— Tena Desae
Wouldn’t it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out.
— Alan Cohen
You are in charge of your own happiness; you don’t need to wait for other people’s permission to be happy.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
You can only have bliss if you don’t chase it.
— Henepola Gunaratana
You cannot judge what should bring others joy, and others cannot judge what should bring you joy.
— Alan Cohen
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
— Jonathan Safran Foer
You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes.
— Lauren Oliver, Delirium
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
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