One joy scatters a hundred griefs.
– Chinese Proverb
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
– George Bernard Shaw, Candida, 1898
One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers.
– Eugene O’Neill
A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.
– Seneca
One filled with joy preaches without preaching.
– Mother Teresa
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
– Joseph Joubert
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.
– Thornton Wilder
Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.
– Colette
Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment – a little makes the way of the best happiness.
– Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
– William Saroyan
People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.
– Anton Chekhov
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.
– Douglas Jerrold
Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.
– Don Herold
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
– Taisen Deshimaru
It is strange what contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely.
– Georges Duhamel
If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal – that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
– J.D. Salinger
There is no expert on what happiness is but many on what it might have been.
– Robert Brault
Eden is that old-fashioned house we dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode until we drive away.
– Emily Dickinson
Happiness is a function of accepting what is.
– Werner Erhard
Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.
– Maxim Gorky
Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
– John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1863
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
– Joseph Addison
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. -Samuel Johnson
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
– Freya Stark, The Journey’s Echo
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
– Robert Brault
In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness – otherwise how would you know when you’re happy?
– Leslie Caron
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
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
– Albert Camus
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When you’re really happy, the birds chirp and the sun shines even on cold dark winter nights – and flowers will bloom on a barren land.
– Grey Livingston