Joy
- An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.--Maurice Maeterlinck
- Almost all unhappiness in life comes from the tendency to blame someone else.--Brian Tracey (The Treasury of Quotes)
- The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.--Henry Ward Beecher
- The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; for happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.--Charles Langbridge Morgan
- Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.--Omar Khayyam
- Be joyful ... Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about.--St. David
- Being happy is something you have to learn. I often surprise myself by saying "Wow, this is it. I guess I'm happy. I got a home I love. A career that I love. I'm even feeling more and more at peace with myself." If there's something else to happiness, let me know. I'm ambitious for that, too.--Harrison Ford
- The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts and we grow happier as we grow older.--William Lyon Phelps
- The best way of removing negativity is to laugh and be joyous.--David Icke
- Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?--Rose Kennedy (Times to Remember)
- But few have spoken of the actual pleasure derived from giving to someone, from creating something, from finishing a task, form offering unexpected help almost invisibly and anonymously.--Paul Wiener
- But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?--Albert Camus
- Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving an impact on people brings happiness.--Rabbi Harold Kushner
- Cheerfulness in most cheerful people is the rich and satisfying result of strenuous discipline.--Edwin Percy Whipple
- Cheerfulness is a very great help in fostering the virtue of charity. Cheerfulness itself is a virtue.--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)
- The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.--Zig Ziglar (Zig Ziglar's Little Book of Big Quotes)
- Comparison is the thief of joy.--Unknown
- The constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.--Ben Franklin
- Cultivate your garden... Do not depend upon teachers to educate you ... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony… In the end, education, like happiness, is individual, and must come to us from life and from ourselves. There is no way; each pilgrim must make his own path. "Happiness," said Chamfort, "is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere."--Will Durant
- Decide that life is good and you are special. Decide to enjoy today. Decide that you will live life to the fullest now, no matter what. Trust that you will change what needs changing, but also decide that you're not going to put off enjoying life just because you don't have everything you want now. Steadfastly refuse to let anything steal your joy. Choose to be happy...and you will be.--Donna Fargo
- Don't go for happiness, go for truth!--Charles Tart
- Eat with the rich, but go play with the poor, who are capable of joy.--Logan Pearsall Smith
- Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner in his joy. He who shares tears with us wipes them away. He divides them in two, and he who laughs with us makes the joy double.--Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
- Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can't wait to finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't wait to get out--and you can't wait to come home, because the soup is hot.--George Burns
- The first recipe for happiness is: Avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.--Andre Maurois
- The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.--James Oppenheim
- For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.--Elise Boulding
- Genuine love will always feel urged to communicate joy--to be a joy-giver. Mankind needs joy.--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)
- Get yourself out of the way, and let joy have more space.--Rumi
- Getting what you go after is success; but liking it while you are getting it is happiness.--Bertha Damon
- The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look.--Fra Giovanni
- God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.--Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)
- The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.–-Allan K. Chalmers
- The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.--Charles Lamb
- Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.--Mark Twain
- Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.--Pearl S. Buck
- The happiest people I know are the ones who have learned how to hold everything loosely and have given the worrisome stress-filled fearful details of their lives into God’s keeping.--Charles Swindoll
- Happiness: a way station between too little and too much.--Channing Pollock
- Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.--Epictetus
- Happiness and high performance come to you when you choose to live your life consistent with your highest values and your deepest convictions.--Brian Tracey (The Treasury of Quotes)
- Happiness consists in activity. It is a running steam, not a stagnant pool.--John Mason Good
- 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
- Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.--Theodore I. Rubin
- Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.--Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.--Arnold Bennett
- Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is just out of grasp... But if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.--Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.--Gretta Palmer
- Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.--Samuel Levenson
- Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Happiness is a present attitude--not a future condition.--Hugh Prather
- Happiness is a tide: it carries you only a little way at a time; but you have covered a vast space before you know that you are moving at all.--Mary Adams (Confessions of a Wife)
- Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.--William Butler Yeats
- Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.--Eleanor Roosevelt
- Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.--Thomas Merton
- Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.--Margaret Lee Runbeck
- Happiness is not found by searching for it, because you find it only when you realize you already have it.--David Charles
- Happiness is not in having being; it is in doing.--Lilian Eichler Watson
- Happiness is not the end of life: character is.--Henry Ward Beecher (Life Thoughts)
- Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.--Rose Lane
- Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.--Mary Baker Eddy
- Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.--Joseph Barbara (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)
- Happiness is the realization of God in the heart. Happiness is the result of praise and thanksgiving, of faith, of acceptance; a quiet tranquil realization of the love of God.--White Eagle
- Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms.--Ding Ling
- Happiness...it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.--Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.--Robert Frost
- The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions--the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.--Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- 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.--Marcus Aurelius
- A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.--Bertrand Russell
- 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
- He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.--William Blake
- Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.--Benjamin Franklin
- The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.--Ben Stein
- I can but think that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the duty of happiness as well as the happiness of duty; for we ought to be as bright and genial as we can, if only because to be cheerful ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others.--John Lubbock, Sir
- I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let's face it, friends make life a lot more fun.--Charles R. Swindoll
- I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude.--Brene Brown (interview with Gretchen Rubin, July 15, 2011)
- I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.--J. D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
- I don't really care how I am remembered as long as I bring happiness and joy to people.--Eddie Albert (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)
- I have committed myself to joy. I have come to realize that those who make space for joy, those who prefer nothing to joy, those who desire the utter reality, will most assuredly have it. We must not be afraid to announce it to refugees, slum dwellers, saddened prisoners, angry prophets. Now and then we must even announce it to ourselves. In this prison of now, in this cynical and sophisticated age, someone must believe in joy.--Richard Rohr
- I have everything in the world that is necessary to happiness--good faith, good friends, and all the work I can possibly do.--Anna Howard Shaw
- I hold those wise who know how to be happy.--Ninon de Lenclos
- I really think happiness is very closely aligned with success, and may almost be an interchangeable synonym. Happiness (like success) also comes from doing what we feel called to do in life; however, it's also obvious no one can experience one without the other.--Donna Fargo (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)
- I think I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.--Booker T. Washington
- I think the most revolutionary act that you can commit in our society is to be happy.--Patch Adams
- If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.--Clarence Darrow
- 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 L. Phelps
- If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.--Thich Nhat Hanh
- 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
- If you are seeking, seek us with joy
For we live in the kingdom of joy.
Do not give your heart to anything else
But to the love of those who are clear joy,
Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.
For there are hopes: they are real, they exist –
Do not go in the direction of darkness –
I tell you: suns exist.--Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
- If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.--Anonymous
- If you truly desire happiness, seek and learn how to serve.--Albert Schweitzer
- If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.--Chinese proverb
- It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.--Agnes Repplier
- It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.--Charles Spurgeon
- It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.--Margaret Bonnano
- It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.--Kin Hubbard
- It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.--Desiderius Erasmus
- I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.--Martha Washington
- Joy comes from using your potential.--Will Schultz
- Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us. Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing--sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death--can take that love away.--Henri Nouwen
- Joy, happiness ... we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections ... to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.--May Sarton
- Joy is at its keenest when contrasted with sorrow, courage at its height when it follows fear, faith at its noblest when it grows from doubt.--Alice H. Rice
- Joy is everywhere; it is in the earth’s green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere.-—Rabindranath Tagore (Sadhana: The Realisation of Life)
- Joy is the echo of God's life within us.--Joseph Marmion
- Joy is the happiness of love--love aware of its own inner happiness. Pleasure comes from without, and joy comes from within, and it is, therefore, within reach of everyone in the world.--Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
- Joy is very infectious; therefore, be always full of joy.--Mother Teresa
- Joy of life seems to arise from a sense of being where one belongs. ... All the discontented people I know are trying sedulously to be something they are not, to do something they cannot do.--David Grayson
- The key to happiness is having dreams; the key to success is making them come true!--James Allen
- The kindest thing you can do for the people you care about is to become a happy, joyous person.--Brian Tracey (The Treasury of Quotes)
- Learning to celebrate joy is one of the great practices of the spiritual life.--Joan Chittister (The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer)
- Make one person happy each day and in forty years you will have made 14,600 human beings happy for a little time at least.--Charley Willey
- Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.--Helen Keller
- May there always be work for your hands to do,
May your purse always hold a coin or two.
May the sun always shine warm on your windowpane,
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near you,
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.--Anonymous
- Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.--Abraham Lincoln
- My creed is that:
Happiness is the only good.
The place to he happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to make others so.--Robert Ingersoll
- My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it.--Chuang Tzu
- 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
- No one has the right to consume happiness without producing it.--Helen Keller
- Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.--A. A. Milne
- Nobody needs a smile so much as the one who has none to give. So get used to smiling heart-warming smiles, and you will spread sunshine in a sometimes dreary world.--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)
- Nobody really cares if you are miserable, so you might as well be happy.--Cythina Nelms
- Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.--Guillaume Apollinaire
- One thing is certain, and I have always known it--they joys of my life have nothing to do with age.--May Sarton
- The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.-–Abraham Maslow
- The only ones who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.--Albert Schweitzer (from The Quotable Teacher, comp. by Howe)
- The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority.--Jean Caldwell
- Praise with elation,
Praise every morning
God's re-creation
Of the First Day!--Eleanor Farjeon
- Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more. .--H. Jackson Brown (?) (Life's Little Instruction Calendar, 1999)
- Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.--Kahlil Gibran
- The secret of happiness is something to do.--John Burroughs
- The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.--Bertrand Russell
- Simply put, you believer that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.--Wayne Dyer
- Smile... It increases your face value!--Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias)
- Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too.
I passed around the corner, and someone saw my grin--
When he smiled I realized, I'd passed it on to him.
I thought about that smile, then I realized its worth,
A single smile, just like mine, could travel round the earth.
So, if you feel a smile begin, don't leave it undetected--
Let's start an epidemic quick and get the world infected!--Anonymous
- So few the grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.--Jane Hirshfield
- So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers.--John Sutherland Bonnell
- Some cannot sing, but the orchard is full of birds and we can all listen.--Anonymous
- Someday you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own. It is something I cannot explain, something within that sends a glow of warmth all through you.--Honore de Balzac
- Somehow not only for Christmas
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.
And the more you spend in blessing
The poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart's possessing
Returns to make you glad.--John Greenleaf Whittier
- Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.--B. R. Hayden
- The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.--Henry Ward Beecher
- That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.--Willa Sibert Cather
- There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all.--Anonymous
- There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.--Robert Louis Stevenson
- There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.--Henry David Thoreau
- There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.--Epictetus
- There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.--Charles Caleb Colton
- Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.--Anne Frank
- This is the true joy in life--being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.--George Bernard Shaw
- To be happy, drop the words if only and substitute instead the words next time.--Smiley Blanton
- To be healthy, wealthy, happy and successful in any and all areas of your life you need to be aware that you need to think healthy, wealthy, and happy and successful thoughts twenty-four hours a day and cancel all negative, destructive, fearful and unhappy thoughts. These two types of thought cannot coexist if you want to share in the abundance that surrounds us all.--Sydney Madwed
- To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.--Bertrand Russell
- To bring joy to one heart with love – is better than a thousand litanies.--Sufi saying
- To get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.--Mark Twain
- To praise is an investment in happiness.--George M. Adams
- To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.--Samuel Johnson
- Too many wish to be happy before becoming wise.--Susanne Curchod Necker
- True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.--Antoine De Saint-Exupery
- True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.--John W. Gardner
- True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.--Helen Keller
- True happiness is ... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.--Seneca
- The truly happy person is always a fighting optimist. Optimism includes not only altruism but also social responsibility, social courage and objectivity.--W. Beran Wolfe
- The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.--Smiley Blanton
- Try to make at least one person happy every day. … If you cannot do a kind deed, speak a kind word. If you cannot speak a kind word, think a kind thought. Count up, if you can, the treasure of happiness that you would dispense in a week, in a year, in a lifetime!--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)
- We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.--Charles Kinglsey
- We always have enough to be happy if we are enjoying what we do have--and not worrying about what we don't have.--Ken Keyes, Jr.
- We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.--Kahlil Gibran
- We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.--Carlos Castaneda
- We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are...Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.--R.J. Baughan
- We spend too much time thinking of what we will do if we are unfortunate, and too little time thinking of what we will do, and how we will be, if we are blessed. ... How will we be, and what will we do, when the best happens to us?--Philip Gulley ("Listening to Life8")
- We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.--Frederick Koenig
- What are the three words a man can say to a woman to make her happy? "I was wrong!"--Lana Banana
- When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.--Kahlil Gibran
- Where fear is, happiness is not.--Seneca
- While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.--H. G. Wells
- Wisdom and joy arise when you learn to exist now rather than in the nonexistent past or future.-—Thich Nhat Hanh
- The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.--Carl Jung
- You can be happy if you know this secret: Some things are within your power to control and some things are not.--Epictetus
- You don't need anyone else's permission to be happy. Your life is magnificent not because someone says it is, but because you choose to see it as such.--Ralph Marston
- You find yourself refreshed in the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.--Lydia M. Child.
- You never know what happiness a simple act of kindness will bring about.-Bree Abel
- You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.--Horace
- You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.--Albert Camus
- Your success and happiness lie within you. External conditions are the accidents of life, its outer trappings.--Helen Keller
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