85 Inspiring Happiness Quotes

“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”

– Louisa May Alcott

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“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

“I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”

– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

― Epictetus

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

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”

― Martha Washington

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.”

– Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.”

– W.P. Kinsella

“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”

– William Saroyan, My Heart’s in the Highlands

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.”

– Gerard Way

“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.”

– Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Be optimistic. Act. Repeat.”

– Shayne Seymour

“Love says ‘I am everything’.
Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’.
Between the two, my life flows.”

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

– William James

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

– Aristotle

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”

– Henry Ford

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are.”

– John A. Shedd

“The ability to find pleasure in the small things is a special gift.”

– Tammy Hader

“You can’t rollerskate in a buffalo herd, but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.”

– Roger Miller

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”

– Elbert Hubbard

“To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.”

– Reba McEntire

“You can’t take a shower in a parakeet cage, but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.”

– Roger Miller

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”

– George Burns

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

– Oscar Wilde

“You can’t go swimming in a baseball pool, but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.”

– Roger Miller

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

– J.D. Salinger

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because, on the whole, it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“You can’t drive around with a tiger in your car, but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.”

-Roger Miller

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”

– Mark Twain

“You can’t go fishing in a watermelon patch, but you can be #happy if you’ve a mind to.”

-Roger Miller

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A tall cold beer drowns the taste of an ugly day.”

– Tammy Hader

“Laughter is poison to fear.”

– George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”

– J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”

― William James

“This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.”

– Susan Polis Schutz

“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’ve always thought people would find a lot more pleasure in their routines if they burst into song at significant moments.”

– John Barrowman

“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

– Hunter S. Thompson

“The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”

– George Washington Burnap

“Happiness does not consist in laziness… In labour and in sweat must each man use the gifts that God conferred upon him on earth.”

– Paracelsus

“Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.”

– Tal Ben-Shahar

“Happiness is a skill, a habit, a study, and a choice.”

– Dr. Christine Bradstreet

“All blame is a waste of time.”

– Dr. Wayne Dyer

“I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”

– Thomas A. Edison

“I’m learning as I go, not before I go.”

– Frank McKinley

“Happiness is a state of activity.”

– Aristotle

“Human beings are only happy when they are reaching toward their highest potential.”

– Barry Michels & Phil Stutz

“The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.”

– Carrie Jones, Need

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

– Dalai Lama XIV

“Gratitude is a powerful catalyst for happiness. It’s the spark that lights a fire of joy in your soul.”

– Amy Collette

“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

– Melody Beattie

“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

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

– Gilbert C. Chesterton

“Gratitude will shift you to a higher frequency, and you will attract much better things.”

– Rhonda Byrne

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.”

– Willie Nelson

“Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you.”

– Eileen Caddy

“Gratitude is the sweetest thing in a seekers life – in all human life. If there is gratitude in your heart, then there will be tremendous sweetness in your eyes.”

– Sri Chinmoy

“The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.”

– Mary Davis

“The root of joy is gratefulness.”

– David Steindl-Rast

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

– Epictetus

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”

– Melody Beattie

“Being thankful is not always experienced as a natural state of existence, we must work at it, akin to a type of strength training for the heart.”

– Larissa Gomez

“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

“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, The Light in the Heart

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”

– Edith Wharton

“The act of chasing joy is like chasing a frightened cat. The more we run after it, the more elusive it becomes. In contrast, the happiest times often pop up at the least expected times, often when we aren’t pursuing them.”

– Dr. Charles Fay

“The most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing your joy, not when you are seeking it.”

– Jaggi Vasudev

“Joy weathers any storm: Happiness rides the waves.”

– Todd Stocker

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”

– Ayn Rand

“Children are happy because they don’t have a file in their minds called “All the Things That Could Go Wrong.”

– Marianne Williamson

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

– John Lennon

“The only way to give happiness is to teach that happiness can’t be given.”

– Shayne Seymour

“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

“Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others…By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.”

– Gordon B. Hinckley

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”

– Mark Twain

“Happiness [is] only real when shared.”

– Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

– Jonathan Safran Foer

“It’s better to be happy than comfortable, if you can’t have both.”

– -Emma Bull

“No medicine cures what happiness cannot.”

– Gabriel García Márquez

“Happiness is a warm puppy.”

– Charles M. Schulz

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”

– Mother Teresa