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Tag: George Santayana

25 Happiness Quotes to Brighten Your Day

1. “Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.” –J. Donald Walters

2. “What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.” –Joseph Addison

3. “Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.” –Hosea Ballou

4. “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

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

6. “A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.” –George Santayana

7.“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.” –Freya Stark

8. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha

9. “He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.” –Alexandre Dumas

10. “There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” –Carl Jung

11. “When I meet people from other cultures I know that they too want happiness and do not want suffering, this allows me to see them as brothers and sisters.” –Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

12. “Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more.” –David Steindl-Rast

13. “People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.” –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

14. “If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.” – Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

15. “No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.” –Barbara De Angelis

16. “A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.” –Hugh Downs

17. “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” – James M. Barrie

18. “No matter how much madder it may make you, get out of bed forcing a smile. You may not smile because you are cheerful; but if you will force yourself to smile, you’ll end up laughing. You will be cheerful because you smile. Repeated experiments prove that when man assumes the facial expressions of a given mental mood–any given mood–then that mental mood itself will follow.” –Kenneth Goode

19. “The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.” – Anne Frank

20. “Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.” –Unknown

21. “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.” –Martha Washington

22. “Happiness consists not in having, but of being, not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself.”-Norman Vincent Peale

23. “People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.” – Ramona L. Anderson

24. “Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.” –Epictetus

25. “Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world.” –William Lyon Phelps

Happiness Quotes

– “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

– “People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest.” – George Matthew Allen

– “In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.” – Albert Schweitzer

– “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

– “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

– “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Ghandi

– “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

– “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

Famous People Quotes #9

“It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.” – Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

“Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.” – Robert Orben

“The cynics are right nine times out of ten.” – Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

“There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.” – George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” – Revelation 6:8

“Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.” – Plato (427-347 B.C.)

“Plato was a bore.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

“Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.” – Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

“I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.” – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

“Hemingway was a jerk.” – Harold Robbins

“Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things.”
– Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)

“What about things like bullets?” – Herb Kimmel, Behavioralist, Professor of Psychology, upon hearing the above quote (1981)

“How can I lose to such an idiot?” – A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

“Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.” – Woody Allen (1935-)

“I don’t feel good.” – The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

“Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.” – Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

“Men have become the tools of their tools.” – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant.” – Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

“I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.” – Gore Vidal

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.” – Woody Allen (1935-)

“Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.” – Abba Eban (1915-2002)

“A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.” – Abba Eban (1915-2002)

“To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.” – Charles William Stubbs

“Sanity is a madness put to good uses.” – George Santayana (1863-1952)

“Imitation is the sincerest form of television.” – Fred Allen (1894-1956)

“Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.” – Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

“Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.” – Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

“Why don’t you write books people can read?” – Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” – T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

“Criticism is prejudice made plausible.” – Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

“It is better to be quotable than to be honest.” – Tom Stoppard

“Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.” – Karl Wallenda

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” – Sun Tzu

“A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.” – Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

” The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” – Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

“Hell is paved with good samaritans.” – William M. Holden