We normally strive to acquire happiness for ourselves and to eliminate our own sufferings, but if we were to take the same responsibility for others as we do for ourselves, we would be pricelessly valuable. --Dalai Lama (in Untitled)

Happiness is not found at the end of the road, it is experienced along the way. So take not for granted each moment of your life and you will find a reason to be happy each day. Don't worry so much about tomorrow that you forget to live today. --Anonymous (in Untitled)

For thousands of years, we've believed that in order to find happiness, we need to change the world around us: a bigger house, more money, a healthier body, a more attractive or understanding partner. With these beliefs as our unconscious religion, we've spent our lives at war with the world. Trying desperately to get reality to match our stories of how we believe it "should" be, we wonder why we don't feel any lasting sense of peace. But how can we feel peace when mentally we're engaged in war, wanting everything to be different than it is. [...] I am simply a woman without a story. --Byron Katie (in Untitled)

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. --Gandhi (in Inspiration to Action)

The place where we can most directly open to the mystery of life is in what we don't do well; in the places of our struggles and vulnerability. These places always require surrender and letting go; when we let ourselves become vulnerable, new things can be born in us. In risking the unknown we gain a sense of life itself. And most remarkably, that which we have sought is often just here, buried under the problem and the weakness itself. When difficulties arise, we project our frustration into them as if it were the rain, the children, the world outside that was the source of our discomfort. We imagine that we can change the world and then be happy. But it is not by moving the rocks that we find happiness and awakening, but by transforming our relationship to them. --Jack Kornfield (in Mystery of Life)

Quickly, when the children see that I have arrived, they want to share their musical talents ... I am reminded that music is one of the few avenues of happiness that is available to them. --Robin Sukhadia (in Avenues of Happiness)

If you want to go in one direction, the best route may involve going in the other. Paradoxical as it sounds, goals are more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly. So the most profitable companies are not the most profit-oriented, the richest people are not those most interested in money and the happiest people are not those who make happiness their main aim. The name of this idea? Obliquity. --John Kay (in The Other Direction)

Only our searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it. It's like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching, or a dog chasing its own tail. Nothing to do or undo, nothing to force, nothing to want, and nothing is missing. --Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche (in Nothing is Missing)

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. --Dalai Lama (in What Makes People Happy)

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. --Guillaume Apollinaire (in Do Good To Fly Free)

All the joy the world contains is through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself. --Shanti Deva (in Concern for Chickens)

May travelers on the road, Find happiness no matter where they go. And may they gain without hardship, The goals on which their hearts are set. From the songs of birds and the whispering trees, From the shafts of light and the sky itself; May the shower of Truth rain down On thirsty hearts and bring fulfillment. --Shantideva, 7th Century (in Travelers On The Road)

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. --Peyton Conway March (in Fairy Godmother)

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. --Jack Gilbert (in Delight)

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 (in Purpose)

True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --Helen Keller (in An Olympic Hero)

May our lives be ever intertwined, our love keeping us together. We will build a home that is compassionate to all, full of respect and honor for others and each other. May our home be forever filled with peace, happiness and love. --Author Unknown (in Made With Love Café)

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. --Albert Camus (in Canadian Index of Well Being)

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing. --Willliam Butler Yeats (in 49 Up: Ongoing Portraits of Life)

Investigating an untrue thought will always lead you back to who you are. It hurts to believe you are other than who you are, to live any story other than happiness. If you put your hand into the fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: when your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it. --Byron Katie (in Your Life (And How You Tell It))

Happiness is the soul's joy in the possession of the intangible. --William Jordan (in Cake But No Presents Please)

It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on. --Sharon Salzberg (in Eighty Year Study On Happiness & Giving)

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. --Mahatma Gandhi (in An Unforgettable Walk Through The Slums)

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. --W. Beran Wolfe (in The Geography of Bliss)

Long after a deed is done, the trace or momentum of the intention left behind it remains as a seed, conditioning our future happiness or unhappiness. --Gil Fronsdal (in Intentional Chocolate)

Happiness is an inside job --William Arthur Ward (in 52 Weeks, 52 Jobs)

There is a living to give instead of to get. As you concentrate on the giving, you discover that just as you cannot receive without giving, so neither can you give without receiving -- even the most wonderful things like health and happiness and inner peace. --Peace Pilgrim (in 29-Day Giving Challenge)

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 (in A Daughter's First Words)

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 (in A Daughter's First Words)

Happiness is a continuous creative activity. --Baba Amte (in What Makes Us Happy?)

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. --Peyton Conway March (in Designing For Generosity)

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime. --Dale Carnegie (in A Birthday Celebration for Every Child)

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 (in The Altruism of Economics)

Happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer of the man with his surroundings. --James Allen (in The Power of Place)

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. --Margaret Lee Runbeck (in This Is Your Brain On Happiness)

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. --John Dewey (in Three Secrets To A Happy Workplace)

Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. --Norman MacEwan (in Cleaning Shoes, Making A Difference)

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give. --Eleanor Roosevelt (in A Child Entrepreneur Gives Back)

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. --St. Augustine (in Practicing the Science of Happiness)

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. --Eleanor Roosevelt (in 10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy)

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. --Charles H. Spurgeon (in Happiness Wards Off Heart Disease)

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being. --Carl Jung (in Art from Ashes)

Joy and happiness are the indicators of balance in a human machine. --Walter Russell (in The World's Happiest People)

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. --George Santayana (in 9 Ways to be Happy in the Next 30 Minutes)

The answer lies within ourselves. If we can't find peace and happiness there, it's not going to come from the outside. --Tenzin Palmo (in Tenzin Palmo: Cave in the Snow)

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 (in A Law for Cooperation)

Happy people learn that happiness, like sweat, is a by-product of activity. --Frank Pittman III (in Beyond the Paycheck)

Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them. --Jack Brown (in 4 Ways to a Happier Workday)

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 (in Engineering Solutions for Africa's Rural Poor)

Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness. --Mark Twain (in The 3 A's of Awesome)