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 in the American Declaration of Independence, 1776
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“All men seek one goal: success or happiness. The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal–a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends–wisdom, money, material and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”
–Aristotle
The pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future.
The good life: using your signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification (activities we like doing) in the main realms of your life.
The meaningful life: using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are.
–Martin Seligman
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
–Mahatma Gandhi
to laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived; this is to have succeeded.
— Ralf Waldo Emerson
“Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”
–Albert Einstein
“One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its results, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
–Albert Einstein
The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
–John Ruskin
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.
–John Ruskin
most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
–Abraham Lincoln
Everybody in the world is seeking happiness and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.
–Dale Carnegie’s
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
–Viktor Frankl
Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure or others, or diminish something of their pains.
–Richard Layard,
And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom, while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.
–Richard Layard,
“The three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.”
–Addison
“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.”
–Bertrand Russell
“Don’t cry because its over, smile because it happened.”
–Unknown
“Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.”
–Robert Anthony
“Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”
–Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.”
–St. Augustine
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” Charlie Chaplin
“A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.”
–Mother Teresa
“A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.”
–Washington Irving
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”
–Howard Thurman
“A laugh is the shortest distance between two people.”
–Victor Borge
“A smile is a curved line that sets things straight.”
–Unknown Author
“Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.”
–Janet Lane
“There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.”
–Lady Blessington
“The best vitamin to be a happy person is B1.”
–Author Unknown
“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
–Buddha
“Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half sorrow.”
–Swedish proverb
“Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.”
–Mark Twain
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
–Mark Twain
“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
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you will not see the shadows.”
–Helen Keller
“A good laugh is sunshine in a house.”
–Thackeray
“Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.”
–Adam Smith
“Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.”
–Buddhist saying
“If you could do something that would make people happy, and it would cost you neither money nor time, would you do it? If that same thing made you happy, would you do it? What is this magical thing that will brighten your day and the days of people around you and yet cost you nothing? A smile.”
–David Niven
“The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy, except that they are so.” William Ralph Inge
“Those only are happy … who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way.”
–John Stuart Mill
“Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.”
–Josh Billings
“The journey is the reward.”
–Tao saying
“The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.” Lin Yutang
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“But we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”
–The Bible, Romans 5:5
“Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit.”
–Norman Vincent Peale
“Gratitude leads to happiness. Conversely, lack of gratitude is the curse of the unhappy.”
–Konosuke Matsushita