|
|
|
If
you want
to be happy, be. -Henry
David Thoreau
|
| |
|
Sometimes our thoughts turn back toward
a corner in a forest,
or the end of a bank, or an orchard powdered with
flowers,
seen but a single time on some happy day, yet remaining
in our hearts
and leaving in soul and body an unappeased desire
which is not to be
forgotten, a feeling that we have just
rubbed elbows with happiness. -Guy de
Maupassant
|
| |
| Happiness not only needs
no justification, but it is also
the only final test of whether what I
am doing is right for me. Only of course happiness is not the
same as pleasure;
it includes the pain of losing as well as the
pleasure of finding. -Joanna Field |
| |
|
How simple and frugal a
thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut,
a
wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is
required to feel
that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal
heart. -Nikos
Kazantzakis, from Zorba the
Greek
|
| |
|
Many run
about after happiness like an absent-minded man
hunting for his hat,
while it is in his hand or on his head.
-James
Sharp
|
| |
| If you observe
really happy people you will
find them
building a boat, writing a symphony, educating their children, growing double dahlias in
their gardens, or looking
for
dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. They will not be
searching
for happiness as if it were a collar button
that has rolled
under the radiator. They will not be
striving for it as a goal
in itself. They will have become
aware that they are happy
in the course of living life
twenty-four crowded hours of the day.
-W. Beran Wolfe |
|
|
|
Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the
disposition
of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good
inner life is difficult to achieve,
especially in these
trying times. It takes reflection, and contemplation and
self-discipline. -W.L.
Shirer |
| |
| One is happy as a result of one's own
efforts--once one knows
the necessary ingredients of
happiness--simple tastes,
a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point,
love of work, and, above all, a
clear conscience. -George Sand |
| |
| Caring about others, running the risk of
feeling,
and leaving an impact on people, brings
happiness. -Rabbi Harold Kushner |
| |
| Everyday happiness
means getting up in the morning and you can't wait to
finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your
exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't
wait to get out--and you can't wait to come home, because
the soup is hot. -George
Burns |
| |
| To live content with small means; to seek
elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than
fashion; to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not
rich; 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 on cheerfully, do all
bravely, awaiting occasions, worry never;
in a word to,
like the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up
through the common. -William Ellery Channing |
| |
| In order to be utterly happy the only thing
necessary is to refrain from
comparing this moment with
other moments in the past, which I
often did not fully
enjoy because I was comparing them
with other moments of
the future. -Andre Gide |
| |
|
Happiness makes up in height
for what it lacks in length. -Robert Frost |
| |
| The happiness which
brings enduring worth to life is not
the superficial
happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the
happiness and contentment that fills the soul even
in the
midst of the most distressing circumstances and the
most
bitter environment. It is the kind of happiness that
grins
when things go wrong and smiles through the tears.
The happiness
for which our souls ache is one undisturbed
by success or failure,
one which will root deeply inside
us and give inward relaxation,
peace, and contentment, no
matter what the surface problems may be. That kind of
happiness stands in need of no outward stimulus.
-Billy
Graham |
| |
|
Happiness
is a butterfly, which, when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp, but which,
if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
-Nathaniel
Hawthorne
|
| |
| 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 Roberts Rinehart |
| |
|
The secret to happiness is this: Let
your interest be as wide as possible,
and let your
reactions to the things and persons that interest you
be
as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
-Bertrand Russell |
| |
|
Happiness is not a
possession
to be prized,
it is a quality
of thought, a
state of mind. -Daphne
DuMaurier
|
| |
|
We
should tell ourselves
once
and for all that it is
the
first duty
of the soul to become as happy,
complete,
independent,
and great
as lies in its power.
To this end we may sacrifice
even
the
passion for sacrifice,
for sacrifice
never should be
the
means of
ennoblement,
but only the sign of being ennobled.
-Maurice
Maeterlinck
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If one
only wished to be happy, this could be easily
accomplished;
but we wish to be happier than other people,
and this is always difficult,
for we believe others to be
happier than they are. -Montesquieu
|
|
|
|
Happiness is a sunbeam
which may pass
through a thousand bosoms
without losing a
particle of its original ray;
nay, when it strikes a
kindred heart,
like the converged light upon a mirror, it
reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not
perfected till it is shared. -Jane
Porter
|
|
|
|
Happiness comes of the capacity
to
feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think
freely, to risk
life, to be needed.
Storm Jameson |
To be able to find joy
in
another's joy: that is
the secret of happiness.
George
Bernanos |
|
|
|
|
I accept life unconditionally. Life holds so
much--so much
to be happy about always. Most people ask
for happiness
on condition. Happiness can be felt only if
you don't set conditions. -Artur Rubinstein
|
|
|
|
One road to happiness is to
cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about
people but about subjects, not only about the arts but
about history and foreign customs. Not only about
countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not
only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the
bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about
your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit
which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will
never suffer a moment's boredom. -Gerald Brenan
|
|
|
|
Everybody really knows
what to do to have his life filled with joy. What is it?
Quit hating people; start loving them. Quit being mad at
people; start liking them. Quit doing wrong; quit being
filled with fear. Quit thinking about yourself
and go out
and do something for other people. Everybody knows what
you have to do to be happy. But the wisdom of the test
lies in the final words: "If ye know these things,
happy are ye if ye do them."
-Norman Vincent Peale
|
|
|
|
The happiness of life is made up of
minute fractions--the little
soon forgotten charities of
a kiss or smile, a kind look,
a heartfelt compliment, and
the countless infinitesimals
of pleasurable and genial
feeling. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
|
|
|
|
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 which has been opened for us.
-Helen
Keller
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It
is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands,
like ticket stubs or change.
But
happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own, it too could
wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records. . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands,
and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon,
but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.
Naomi
Shihab Nye
from "So Much Happiness"
|
|
|
|
|
Why is it that so many people
are afraid to
admit they are happy? -William Lyon Phelps |
|
|
|
May
we never let the things we can’t have or don’t have
or shouldn’t
have spoil our enjoyment of the things we do have
and can have.
As we value our happiness, let us not forget it.
One of the greatest lessons in life is learning to be happy
without the things we cannot or should not have.
-Richard L. Evans |
|
|
|
I don't
know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know:
the only ones among you who will be really happy
are those
who will have sought and found how to serve.
-Albert Schweitzer |
|
|
|
Those who decide to use leisure as a means
of
mental development,
who love good music, good books,
good plays, good company, good
conversation--what
are
they? They are the happiest people in the world.
-William Lyon Phelps |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happiness is a wine of the rarest
vintage
and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.
-Logan Pearsall Smith |
|
|
My
creed is this:
Happiness is the only good.
The place to be happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Robert G. Ingersoll |
|
|
|
But what is happiness
except the simple harmony
between a person and the life he or she leads?
-Albert Camus |
|
|
|
It is not how much we
have,
but how much we enjoy,
that makes happiness. -Charles Haddon
Spurgeon |
|
|
|
Where your pleasure is, there
is
your
treasure; where your
treasure, there
your heart;
where your heart,
there your happiness. -St. Augustine |
|
|
|
To find
out what one is fitted to do
and to secure an opportunity
to do it
is the key to happiness. -John
Dewey |
|
|
|
Unquestionably, it is possible to do
without happiness;
it is done voluntarily by nineteen-twentieths
of humankind. -John Stuart Mill |
|
|
|
The art
of living does not consist in preserving and clinging
to
a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness
to change its form without being disappointed by the
change;
happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow
up. -Charles L. Morgan |
|
|
|
The first recipe for
happiness is:
Avoid too lengthy meditations on the
past. -Andre Maurois |
|
|
|
If this world
affords true happiness, it is to be found
in a home where
love and confidence increase with the years, where the
necessities of life come without severe strain, where
luxuries enter only after their cost
has been carefully
considered. -A.
Edward Newton |
|
|
|
For most of life,
nothing wonderful happens. If you don't enjoy
getting up
and working and finishing your work and
sitting down to a meal
with family or friends, then the
chances are you're not going
to be very happy. If
someone bases his or her happiness or unhappiness
on major
events like a great new job, huge amounts of money,
a
flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person
isn't going
to be happy much of the time. If, on
the other hand, happiness depends
on a good breakfast,
flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap,
then we are more
likely to live with quite a bit of happiness.
-Andy
Rooney |
|
|
|
Happy the
person who has learned the
cause
of
things and has put under his or her feet
all fear,
inexorable fate, and the noisy strife of the hell of
greed. -
Virgil |
|
|
|
Happiness is not in our
circumstances, but in ourselves.
It is not something we
see, like a rainbow, or feel, like
the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we
are. -John B. Sheerin |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Just as a cautious
businessperson avoids
investing
all his or her
capital in one concern,
so wisdom would
probably admonish us also
not to anticipate all our
happiness from one quarter. -Sigmund Freud |
|
|
|
People who postpone
happiness are like children who try chasing rainbows
in
an effort to find the pot of gold at the rainbow's end. .
. .
Your life will never be fulfilled until you are happy
here and now. -Ken Keyes, Jr. |
|
|
|
Pleasure and
happiness are too often equated with being the same;
in reality they are very different. Pleasure comes. It
also goes. It is
the flavor and content of many of the impressions we encounter in
our lives. Happiness has not so much to do with the content or
impressions of our experiences; but with our capacity to find balance
and peace amid the myriad impressions of our lives. Treasuring
happiness and freedom, we learn to live our lives with openness and
serenity. -Christina Feldman |
|
|
|
Happiness sneaks in through a
door
you didn't know you left open.
-John Barrymore |
|
|
|
Happiness
is at once the best, the noblest,
and the pleasantest of things.
-Aristotle |
|
|
|
To live
happily is an inward power
of the soul. -Marcus
Aurelius |
|
|
|
People of the noblest
dispositions think themselves happiest
when others share their
happiness with them. -Jeremy Taylor |
|
|
|
The
happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that
which
we obtain from our surroundings. . . .
The world in which a person
lives shapes itself chiefly
by the way in which he or she looks at it.
-Arthur
Schopenhauer |
|
|
|
Your success
and happiness lie in you. External conditions are the accidents
of life.
The great enduring realities are love and
service. Joy is the holy fire that keeps
our purpose warm and
our intelligence aglow. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy
and
you shall form an invincible host against difficulty.
-Helen Keller |
|
|
|
It is neither
wealth nor splendor, but tranquility
and occupation, which give
happiness. -Thomas
Jefferson |
|
|
|
Happiness is
intrinsic, it's an internal thing.
When you build it into
yourself,
no external circumstances can take it away.
-Leo Buscaglia |
|
|
|
It would be a great thing if people could be brought
to realize
that they can never add to the sum of their happiness by
doing wrong. -John Lubbock |
|
|
|
We
cannot be happy until we can love ourselves
without egotism and our
friends without tyranny. -Cyril
Connolly |
|
|
|
How simple and
frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine,
a roast chestnut,
a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . .
All that
is required to feel that here and now is happiness, is a simple,
frugal heart. -Nikos
Kazantzakis |
|
|
|
To
be happy is easy enough if we give ourselves, forgive others,
and live
with thanksgiving. No self-centered person, no ungrateful soul
can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy.
Life is
giving, not getting. -Joseph
Fort Newton |
|
|
|
The fountain of
contentment must spring up in the mind.
They who have so little
knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness
by changing
anything but their own dispositions will waste their lives
in
fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which they purpose to remove.
-Samuel
Johnson |
|
|
|
We
have no more right to consume happiness
without producing it than to consume
wealth without producing it.
-George
Bernard Shaw |
|
|
|
Buried deep in the maze
of commonplace, the pearl of true happiness lies.
And those who rejoice in little things, find the pathway that leads to
the prize. -Lucy M. Thompson |
|
|
|
Simply
to have all the necessities of life and three meals a day will
not bring happiness.
Happiness is hidden in the unnecessary and in those
impractical things that bring delight to the inner person. . .
. When we lack proper time
for the simple pleasures of life,
for the enjoyment of eating, drinking, playing, creating,
visiting friends, and watching children at play, then we have
missed
the purpose of life.
Not on bread alone do we live but on all these human
and heart-hungry luxuries.
-Ed Hays |
|
|
I try very hard to learn from people who are unhappy,
for I believe that they are the people who can best teach
me how to be happy. Ironically enough, these are
often the people who put up the greatest facade of
happiness--always bright and cheerful among company, but
when you talk to them alone, you find a great deal of
discontent or frustration or anger or discouragement.
I've found that happiness isn't all that
difficult. It's been very important for me to do
several things on my path to happiness, and here they are,
in no particular order:
Be true to myself, my principles, and
my faith. This faithfulness to myself keeps me from
beating myself up over actions that I'm not proud of.
If i base my actions on principle and truly follow
that principle, I won't engage in the self-denigration
that Ive seen so many others (especially alcoholics)
engage in.
Give up the thoughts of being HAPPY.
Somehow our culture has turned happiness into this
unobtainable permanently ecstatic state--a result of too
many people in entertainment and advertising who have no
idea of what happiness truly is trying to tell us how to
be happy. They're not the problem--the problem is,
we listen.
Not worry about things or events.
As Andy Rooney says above, happiness has less to do
with major events or the versions of success fed to us by
unhappy people from Hollywood or Madison Avenue than with acceptance and
awareness and appreciation of the little things in our
lives, like this wonderful computer that allows me to
build this website and share these great people's words
with so many others. And it's one of the cheaper
computers, certainly not a top-of-the-line model. But
it does a great job, and I love it, and I don't spend
time wishing for anything more.
Focus on others and their needs,
without getting obsessive about it and robbing myself of
quiet time and recreational time. I'm useless to
others if I'm not rested and in full command of my senses.
I work at balancing what I give of time and effort
with what I need to keep going and to stay happy. I
often say yes when people ask me to help, but I often say
no, too. It depends on where I am and how it will
affect other aspects of my life. Some of the least
happy people I know give so much of themselves that they're
always tired and cranky, and they often start resenting
the very people they're supposed to help.
Find my niches. I would love to
play the guitar and piano, but I'm not that good at
either. I am good at other things, so instead of
spending tons of time trying to learn a little bit of
everything, I try to focus on my strengths. I can
play chords on the guitar and enjoy it, but to spend
hours and hours trying to get really good--well, there
are plenty of great guitar players out there who can make
up for my absence in the world of music.
All in all, I know that happiness is
obtainable, and the first quotation of this page is a
very telling one. Ask yourself if you don't have
everything in your life that can make you happy, and then
ask yourself if you're happy. Look at yourself
through the eyes of someone who doesn't have what you
have--material goods, health, intelligence, ability,
creativity--and hear that person telling you, "I
would be so happy if I had only a part of what you have."
And don't answer, "Yes, but. . ." answer,
"You're right--I do have many gifts. I'll try
to be happy with them."
tom walsh |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Home - About -
Links
- abundance - acceptance
- achievement - action
- adversity - aging -
ambition -
America
anger - anticipation -
apathy - appreciation -
arrogance
- attitude - authenticity -
autumn - awareness -
awe
balance -
beauty - being yourself - beliefs -
body - brooding -
busyness -
celebration - challenges - change
character - children -
choice -
Christianity - Christmas - coincidence -
commitment - common sense
community - comparison -
compassion - complaining -
compliments
- compromise - confidence -
conformity
conscience - contentment
- control - courage -
covetousness - creativity -
crisis -
criticism - cruelty - death
desire - determination -
discouragement - diversity - doubt -
dreams - earth -
education -
ego - encouragement
enlightenment - enthusiasm - envy -
eternity
- experience - failure -
faith - family -
fathers - fault-finding
- fear
flowers - forgiveness - freedom -
friendship - fun -
the
garden of life - gardening - generosity -
gentleness - giving
goals - God - goodness -
grace - gratitude -
greed - grief -
growing up - guilt - happiness -
hatred - healing -
health
helpfulness - home - honesty -
hope - hospitality -
humility -
hurry - ideals - idleness -
idolatry - ignorance
imagination -
impatience - individuality - inspiration -
integrity -
introspection - intuition - jealousy -
journey - joy
judgment -
kindness - knowledge - laughter -
law of attraction - laziness -
leadership - learning - letting go -
life
listening - loneliness
- love - lying - marriage -
materialism - meanness -
meditation -
mindfulness - miracles
mistakes - mistrust -
money - mothers -
mystery - nature - negative attitude -
new year - oneness
open mindedness - opportunity -
optimism - pain -
patience - peace -
perfectionism - perseverance -
perspective
pessimism - play -
positive thinking - possessions -
potential - prayer -
prejudice -
the present moment - pride
principle - prosperity - purpose -
reflection - relationships - religion -
resentment - respect -
responsibility - rest
revenge - risk - role models -
sadness -
safety - the seasons of life -
self - self-love -
self-pity -
self-respect
service -
shame - silence - simplicity -
smiles -
solitude - spirit - spring -
success - summer -
the tapestry of
life
teachers -
Thanksgiving - thoughts - time -
today - trust -
truth - values - vanity -
war - weight - winter -
wisdom
wonder
- work - worry -
worship - youth -
zen
Dale Carnegie - Albert Einstein - Ralph
Waldo Emerson - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross
Helen Keller - Mother
Teresa - Eleanor Roosevelt - Orison
Swett Marden - Albert Schweitzer - Aristotle
Mohandas Gandhi - Wilferd
A. Peterson
|
|
|
|
|
Two
great Kindle books from livinglifefully.com! First,
the daily meditations from the first year are gathered
together in a single volume at just $2.99 for the entire
year, and second, almost 4,000 quotes from
livingllifefully.com are gathered in one volume for just
99 cents--that's right, for less than one dollar, you can
have thousands of quotes that took years to gather on your
own PC, Mac, or Kindle, to have with you wherever you are. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
