She whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain. Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, closing words
There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness. Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward. Baruch Spinoza
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881
There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will prevent me from being happy. Jean Anouilh, French dramatist
Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus ch24 p200
That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. Willa Cather, American novelist
Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. Robert G Ingersoll
The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called ‘faith’. Robert G Ingersoll, On the Gods and Other Essays
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. Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973
Happiness is a warm gun. John Lennon & The Beatles, The White Album, 1968
Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. George Bernard Shaw, Candida, 1898
Oh Happiness! our being’s end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate’er thy name:
That something still which prompts th’ eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn. John Keats
Happiness lies in conquering one’s enemies, in driving them in front of oneself, in taking their property, in savouring their despair, in outraging their wives and daughters. Genghis Khan
For if unhappiness develops the forces of the mind, happiness alone is salutary to the body. Marcel Proust
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1930
Boredom is … a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it. ibid.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. ibid.
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relationships. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation. ibid.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. Bertrand Russell
The action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1725
About six or seven o’clock, I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads ... I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world, but the knowledge that they are so. Dorothy Osborne, Letters of Dorothy Osborne, to William Temple 1653
Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious, of which you are not aware. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy ... You want to be consciously happy; the moment you are consciously happy, happiness is gone. Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. Samuel Johnson
One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes. Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Sentences et Maximes de Morale, 1664
The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. John F Kennedy
It has often been argued in fact that mankind lost the happiness characteristic of his fellow animals when he acquired self-consciousness. This is in fact the meaning of the legend of The Fall. We have become as gods, knowing good and evil, and the price is that we live by labour and ‘in his eyes foreknowledge of death’. Aleister Crowley, Death of a Drug Fiend
Happiness lies within one’s self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine. Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend
One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. George Sand, letter 31st March 1862
The problem with these ideas is that they’re far too optimistic. In Seneca’s analysis, people get angry because they’re too hopeful. Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Seneca on Anger
Nietzsche says in order to get great happiness from life, in order to harvest great happiness, you’ve got to live dangerously, he says. Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Nietzsche on Hardship, 2000
Epicurus believed we could all find a way to be happy. The problem was quite simply that we were looking in the wrong place. Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness
Epicurus insisted that we only need three things to be happy: friends, freedom and analyse life. ibid.
Epicurus makes us think very carefully about the merits of our own society ... Happiness may be difficult to attain, and Epicurus admitted that, but he insisted that the obstacles are not primarily financial. ibid.
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. Charles Spurgeon
Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to hunt for happiness. William E Gladstone
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. Agnes Repplier
Happiness depends on ourselves. Aristotle
Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labour and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves ... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement. Aristotle