Quotes on Happiness

By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.

When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!

I used to want the words 'She tried' on my tombstone. Now I want 'She did it.'

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

No pleasure is evil in itself; but the means by which certain pleasures_x000D_ _x000D_ are gained bring pains many times greater than the pleasures.

Act in such a way that you will be worthy of being happy.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

What wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress.

God intends no man to live in this world without working, but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work.

The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.

Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.

I love the broad margin to my life.

Maybe the reason my memory is so bad is that I always do at least two things at once. It's easier to forget something you only half-did or quarter did.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.

But what is work and what is not work? Is it work to dig, to carpenter, to plant trees, to fell trees, to ride, to fish, to hunt, to feed chickens, to play the piano, to take photographs, to build a house, to cook, to sew, to trim hats, to mend motor bicycles? All of these things are work to somebody, and all of them are play to somebody. There are in fact very few activities which cannot be classed either as work or play according as you choose to regard them.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.

You can never predict what little things in the way somebody looks or talks or acts will set off peculiar emotional reactions in other people.