Adams John 1735-1826
Thoughts on Government
The happiness of society is the end of government.
Austen Jane 1775-1817
Emma
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation?
Austen Jane 1775-1817
Mansfield Park
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.
Baker Russell
Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.
Balzac Honoré De 1799-1850
All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all.
Barrie J.M. 1860-1937
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do.
Beerbohm Sir Max 1872-1956
More „Going Back to School"
Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.
Bentham Jeremy 1748-1832
The Commonplace Book
The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
Beveridge William Henry 1879-1963
Social Insurance and Allied Services
The object of government in peace and in war is happiness of the common man.
Buchan John 1875-1040
„What would you call the highest happiness?"
Wratislaw was asked. „The sense of competence,"
was the answer, given without hesitation.
Buckrose J.E.
Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again - this is the brave and happy life.
Burney Fanny (Mme D'Arblay) 1752-1840
Cecilia
Travelling is the ruin of all happinees! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
Burns George 1896-1996
Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, and a good woman - or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle.
Cowper William 1731-1800
Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
Cowper William 1731-1800
Happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Dryden John 1631-1700
The Indian Emperor
For all the happiness mankind can gain
Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.
Elizabeth I Queen 1533-1603
(to William Cecil on his death-bed)
I do entreat heaven daily for your longer life, else will my people and myself stand in need of cordials too. My comfort hath been in my people's happiness and their happiness in thy discretion.
Emerson Ralph Waldo 1803-1882
Essays
To fill the hour - that is happiness.
Epictetus AD c.50-130
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
Euripides c.485-406 BC
Happiness is brief
It will not stay.
God batters at its sails.
Frost Robert 1874-1963
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Galen c.AD 130-201
Employment is nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness.
Goethe Johann von 1749-1832
Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence without giving himself airs about it.
Goodman Roy M.
Remember that happiness is a way of travel -not a destination.
Gunther John 1901-1970
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
Hugo Victor 1802-1885
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
Huxley Aldous 1894-1963
Limbo
I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.
Huxley Aldous 1894-1963
„Ninth Philosopher's Song"
Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Ingersoll Robert G. 1833-1899
My creed is that:
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.
Jefferson Thomas 1743-1826
American Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Boswell - Life
Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Boswell - Life
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Boswell - Life (letter to Boswell)
Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable,and others extremely difficult.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Kant Immanuel 1724-1804
Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics
Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.
Keller Helen 1880-1968
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Lennon John and McCartney Paul 1940-1980 and 1942
„Happiness is a Warm Gun"
I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun.
MacInnes Colm
At rare moments in history, by a series of accidents never to be repeated, arise flower societies in which the cult of happiness is paramount, hedonistic, mindless, intent upon the glorious physical instant.
Marquis Don 1878-1937
Happiness comes fleetingly now and then,
To those who have learned to do without it
And to them only.
Marquis Don 1878-1937
Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.
Marvell Andrew 1621-1678
„The Garden"
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness.
Maugham W. Somerset 1874-1965
The Moon and Sixpence
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
Maxwell William
Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.
Mill John Stuart 1806-1873
Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily nineteen-
twentieths of mankind.
Montale Eugenio 1896-1981
„Felicità raggiunta"
Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light,
to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.
Newton A. Edward
The formula for complete happiness is to be very busy with the unimportant.
Nicholson William
Shadowlands (words spoken by C.S. Lewis)
Happiness is not wanting to be anywhere else, not waiting for anything new to happen, not looking round the next corner or over the next hill.
Norris Kathleen
Marriage; a job. Happiness or unhappiness has nothing to do with it.
Ogburn Jr. Charleton
Happiness to a dog is what lies on the other side of a door.
Péguy Charles 1873-1914
It has never been given to man to attain at once his happiness and his salvation.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
An Essay on Man
Oh Happiness! our being's end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! wnate'er thy name:
That something still which prompts th'eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die.
Rayner Clare 1931-
I always say I don't think everyone has the right to happiness or to be loved. Even
the Americans have written into their constitution that you have the right to the
„pursuit of happiness". You have the right to try but that's all.
Reed Rex
In Hollywood, if you don't have happiness, you send out for it.
Repplier Agnes 1858-1950
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
Rousseau Jean-Jacques 1712-1778
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and good digestion.
Russell Bertrand 1872-1970
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Russell Bertrand 1872-1970
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
Russell Bertrand 1872-1970
The Conquest of Happiness
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Santayana George 1863-1952
I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism.
Santayana George 1863-1952
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
Santayana George 1863-1952
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
Saroyan William 1908-1981
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
Schiller Friedrich von 1759-1805
The will of man is his happiness.
Schopenhauer Arthur 1788-1860
Money is human happiness in the abstract.
Schweitzer Albert 1875-1965
Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
The Merchant of Venice
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean.
Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
Candida
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
Man and Superman
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
Sheldon William H.
Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation.
Strachey Lytton 1880-1932
Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Szasz Thomas
The Second Sin „Emotions"
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
Tawney R.H. 1880-1962
If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
Whately Richard 1787-1863
Apophthegms
Happiness is no laughing matter.
Wigglesworth E.
Man's happiness springs mainly from moderate troubles, which afford the mind a healthful stimulus, and are followed by a reaction which produces a cheerful flow of spirits.