For those suffering through difficult circumstances or those simply looking for a pick-me-up, these quotes about happiness should get the job done. No matter who you are or where you come from, everyone has the same ultimate desire: to be happy. Perhaps these quotes about happiness can help you get started.
Helpful Quotes About Happiness
A wise elder who had experienced life to the fullest said, “Happiness is less a matter of getting what we want, in money or goods, than wanting what we have.” Savor the moment is an important link to happiness.
“Happiness,” said Benjamin Franklin, “is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by the little advantages that occur every day.” Pascal remarked that we too often live as if the present were merely our means to the future as he put it, “So we never live, but we hope to live, and as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.”
The great psychologist David G. Myers, Ph.D.–who was known for creating many astounding quotes about happiness–once said, “To live in the present means, for me, taking delight in the day’s magic moments, from morning tea and cereal, hunched over a manuscript, to the day’s last moments snuggling and talking with my wife. Happiness isn’t somewhere off in the future, but in this morning’s phone conversation with a friend that needed a friend.” Myers also said that, “People who can name several close, supportive friends live with greater health and happiness.”
Joy Davidson, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist and frequent writer on the subject of happiness for the Los Angeles Times and the Health and Fitness News Service. Her approach to happiness is summed up in these words: “Most of us need to learn that our happiness is not a prize; it doesn’t have to be earned. But it does have to be nurtured. Real happiness is composed of streams of pleasurable and satisfying moments that accumulate over time. As these fulfilled moments add up, you’ll find yourself happy now instead of later.
Barbara Yost, a frequent writer on happiness, says that, “Happiness might not be so much a goal as a byproduct of the good work we do and the wisdom we find.”
Other Quotes About Happiness
“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.” Quote by Sharon Salzberg.
“Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.” Quote by Leo Tolstoy.
“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: 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.” Quote by Groucho Marx.
Remember to use these quotes about happiness whenever trouble strikes or you simply need to recall the infinite beauty that is this moment.