Inspiring Happiness Quotes

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

“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

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

― Epictetus

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

– Louisa May Alcott

“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

“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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“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

“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

“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

“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