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What does it mean to be happy? How important is it to be happy? What makes us happy? We are all involved in the pursuit of happiness and it can mean something different to each of us. Here is a large collection of happy quotes that we think you will enjoy. Our hope is that some will speak to you and add some joy to your day! Please share widely and spread the happy!

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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

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

--Vicki Baum

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

--Cicero

The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.

--Deepak Chopra

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

--J. Donald Walters

Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.

--Jane Porter

There is the love and marriage and family kind of happiness, which is exceedingly boring to describe but nonetheless is important to have and dreadful not to have.

--P.J. O'Rourke

Better to be happy than wise.

--John Heywood

Happy wife, happy life.

--Paul Orfalea

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

--Ariana Grande

The only joy in the world is to begin.

--Cesare Pavese

Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age.

--Booth Tarkington

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

--Abraham Lincoln

We are all happy if we but knew it.

--Fyodor Dostoevsky

To be happy, make others happy.

--Stephen Richards

Do not wait for a reason to be happy.

--Mason Cooley

Don't Worry Be Happy.

--Meher Baba

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.

--James Oppenheim

Sometimes you have to let everything go -- purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything -- whatever is bringing you down -- get rid of it. Because you will find that when you are free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.

--Tina Turner

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt

The more we express our gratitude to God for our blessings, the more he will bring to our mind other blessings. The more we are aware of to be grateful for, the happier we become.

--Ezra Taft Benson

How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and that there will never be a time when it is not now.

--Gerald Jampolsky

Be happy, and a reason will come along.

--Robert Breault

Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose.

--C. S. Lewis

Nothing can take your joy; you have to give it away. You're in complete control of your happiness.

--Joel Osteen

Often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.

--Helen Keller

The best things in life aren't things.

--Art Buchwald

You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness.

--Alyson Noel

Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.

--Milton H. Erickson

You are in charge of your own happiness; you don't need to wait for other people's permission to be happy.

--Roy T. Bennett

Stop giving other people the power to control your happiness, your mind, and your life. If you don't take control of yourself and your own life, someone else is bound to try.

--Roy T. Bennett


Happiness depends on your mindset and attitude.

--Roy T. Bennett

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness:
a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

--Nikos Kazantzakis

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

--George Washington Burnap

I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.

--Alexandre Dumas

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

--Haruki Murakami

Happiness is where we find it, but very rarely where we seek it.

--J. Petit Senn

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

--Mildred Barthel

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

--Arthur Schopenhauer

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

--Mother Teresa

One happiness scatters a thousand sorrows.

--Chinese Proverb

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

--Mark Twain

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life.

--Henrik Ibsen

Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.

--Frank Tyger

Happiness comes from peace. Peace comes from indifference.

--Naval Ravikant

No medicine cures what happiness cannot.

--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.

--Roy T. Bennett

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

--Aristotle

The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment.

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It's the moments that I stopped just to be, rather than do, that have given me true happiness.

--Richard Branson

Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.

--Norm Papernick

Happiness is a well-balanced combination of love, labour, and luck.

--Mary Wilson Little

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Longer Version:

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.


You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

--Jonathan Safran Foer

Happiness is distraction from the human tragedy.

--J.M. Reinoso

Happiness is a form of courage.

--Holbrook Jackson

Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.

--Gretta Brooker Palmer

As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.

--Andrew Delbanco

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

--William Saroyan

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

--Alain de Botton

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 first recipe for happiness is: Avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

--Andre Maurois

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

--Thomas Jefferson

Longer Version:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
-Thomas Jefferson.


Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.

--Baltasar Gracian

Happiness, I do not know where to turn to discover you on earth, in the air or the sky; yet I know you exist and are no futile dream.

--Rosalia de Castro

Protect your health. Without it you face a serious handicap for success and happiness.

--Harry F. Banks

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

--Zhuangzi

I think happiness is love.

--Vladimir Putin

Happiness is the bomb cosmetic! When I'm smiling, sometimes I'm giving thanks for all the things I have rather than worrying about the things I don't.

--Yaya DaCosta

The paradox of faith is that when we conform our lives to Christ then we gain our true freedom. And its fruit is profound and lasting happiness.

--Vincent Nichols

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

--Viktor Frankl

Longer Version:

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.


The secret of happiness is to find a congenial monotony.

--V.S. Pritchett

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

--Victor Hugo

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.

--Victor Hugo

I don't have the recipe for happiness, but I think the engine is simply having the desire.

--Vanessa Paradis

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of common man.

--William Beveridge

If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be, I think, an American cow.

--William Lyon Phelps

Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

--William Bennett

It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.

--William Wilberforce

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

--William Butler Yeats

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.

--William Morris

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

--Willa Cather

The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.

--William Godwin

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.

--William Feather

Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.

--William Cowper

Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.

--Wayne Gretzky

The philosophical point is that our happiness and wellbeing is not based on incomes rising. This is not just the wisdom of sages but of ordinary people. Prosperity is more social and psychological: it's about identification, affiliation, participation in society and a sense of purpose.

--Tim Jackson

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

--Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Happiness for me is totally just being at peace knowing that, everything I'm doing, God is pleased with that. It's complete peace for me.

--Tyler Perry

A smile is happiness you'll find right under your nose.

--Tom Wilson

You might not make it to the top, but if you are doing what you love, there is much more happiness there than being rich or famous.

--Tony Hawk

Bosses should sanction the nap rather than expect workers to power on all day without repose. They might even find that workers' happiness -- or what management types refer to as 'employee satisfaction results' -- might improve.

--Tom Hodgkinson

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

--Tom Brady

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

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

--Thomas Jefferson

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Wishing you a very very happy, content, joyful, euphoric, enchanted, even rapturous day! Bliss out! (-: