Famous Quotes & Sayings

Plutarch

Choose what is best, and habit will make it pleasant and easy.

Plutarch

Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.

Phillips Brooks

Happiness is the natural flower of duty.

Nathaniel Parker Willis

There is a gentle element, and man may breathe it with a calm, unruffled soul, and drink its living waters, till his heart is pure; and this is human happiness.

Nathaniel Branden

The tragedy of too many people is that they cannot allow happiness just to be there; they cannot leave it alone. Their sense of who they are and of what their destiny is cannot accommodate happiness. So they are drive to find ways to sabotage it.

Nathaniel Branden

Some people have a view of self and of the universe that obliges them to struggle for happiness, to yearn for happiness-"some time in the future"-perhaps next year or the year after that. But not now. Not at this moment. Not here. Here and now is too terrifyingly close, too terrifyingly immediate. They suffer from happiness anxiety.

Nathaniel Branden

Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender -not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness, within those precincts, and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?

Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow--the latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

Mother Teresa

A joyful heart is like the sunshine of God's love, the hope of eternal happiness.

Victor Hugo

There are no rules for felicity.

Victor Hugo

Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.

Vicki Baum

There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.

Victor Borge

If I have caused just one person to wipe away a tear of laughter, that's my reward.

Victor Borge

Always remember to forget the things that made you sad, but never forget to remember the things that made you glad.

Vernon Howard

Happiness is liberty from everything that makes us unhappy.

Richard Bach

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

Richard Bach

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

Richard Bach

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

Robert Foster Bennett

While we are focusing on fear, worry or hate, it is not possible for us to be experiencing happiness, enthusiasm or love.

Rita Hayworth

I always thought that if I ever got good reviews I'd be happy. It's so empty. It's never what I wanted, ever. All I wanted was just what everybody else wants, you know - to be loved.

Rita Mae Brown

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

Richard Dreyfuss

Happiness has a bad rap. People say it shouldn't be your goal in life. Oh, yes it should.

Thornton Wilder

When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.

Thornton Wilder

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

Thomas Paine

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.

Thomas Paine

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.

Thomas Paine

When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government

Thomas Browne

Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.