Happiness quotes -
"Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that."
~ Michael Leunig
"To be able to find joy in another's joy: that is the secret of happiness."
~ George Bernanos
"If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are."
~ Montesquieu
"One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom."
~ Gerald Brenan
"The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling."
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. If you observe really happy people you will find them building a boat, writing a symphony, educating their children, growing double dahlias in their gardens, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. They will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. They will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. They will have become aware that they are happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. To find happiness we must seek for it in a focus outside ourselves."
~ W. Beran Wolfe
"The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not the superficial happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the happiness and contentment that fills the soul even in the midst of the most distressing circumstances and the most bitter environment. It is the kind of happiness that grins when things go wrong and smiles through the tears. The happiness for which our souls ache is one undisturbed by success or failure, one which will root deeply inside us and give inward relaxation, peace, and contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be. That kind of happiness stands in need of no outward stimulus."
~ Billy Graham
"Happiness is that brief sigh of a moment that delivers a glow of peace and serenity. Happiness is that tiny point of a feeling in our chest that radiates itself a million times throughout our being. Happiness is that "pause" that refreshes our spirit, allowing us to plunge back into the rigors of our lives with renewed vigor. Happiness is that precise moment that allows us to experience--even if briefly--that we are a part of a vastness our minds will never comprehend. Don't knock the brevity of happiness. Rejoice in its existence."
~ Anne Wilson Schaef
Meditations for Living in Balance
"In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future."
~ Andre Gide
"Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed."
~ Storm Jameson
"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear on cheerfully, do all bravely, awaiting occasions, worry never; in a word to, like the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common."
~ William Ellery Channing
"Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection, and contemplation and self-discipline."
~ W.L. Shirer
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands,
like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own, it too could
wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records. . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands,
and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and
in that way, be known.
Naomi Shihab Nye
from "So Much Happiness"
More quotes here - a few pages worth!
Greater good has some advice on cultivating happiness
Trans4mind is another excellent site - dozens of articles in fact
Their resources page also looks worthy of a visit!
