Happiness

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. ~Mother Teresa When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. Helen Keller Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities. Aristotle Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul. Democritus The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts; therefore guard accordingly. Marcus Aurelius Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. Aldous Huxley There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you. David Burns, Intimate Connections The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitessimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling. Samuel Taylor Coleridge The man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life. Euripides Happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature; it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool. John M. Good Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. Margaret Lee Runbeck A light heart lives long. William Shakespeare Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. Charles Caleb Colton Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles. from How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind. Alice Meynell Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress. Epictetus Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances. Benjamin Franklin There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying things which are beyond the power of our will. Epictetus I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them. John Stuart Mills You're happiest while you're making the greatest contribution. Robert F. Kennedy Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. Benjamin Disraeli Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life. William Ellery Channing The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken. Henry W. Longfellow Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. Douglas Jerrold Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it. J. Petit Senn To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. Albert Camus The only way on earth to multiply happiness is to divide it. Paul Scherer Happiness depends upon ourselves. Aristotle Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come,—as though that time should be of another make from this which has already come and is ours. Thomas Fuller Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. George Santayana No man is happy who does not think himself so. Publilius Syrus Our minds are as different as our faces: we are all traveling to one destination; --happiness; but few are going by the same road. Charles Caleb Colton