How to be happy

Aldous Huxley

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness it is generally the by-product of other activities.

Aristotle

Happiness is bloom upon the cheek of youth. 

Eleanor Roosevelt

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

Baruch Spinoza


Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.


Eckhart Tolle

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.

Benjamin Franklin


Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.

Bertrand Russell

To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

(Thank God I do.)

Alfred Adler

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

Dryden, translating Horace. Book III, Ode 29.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
'Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd today.'

Rousseau

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

Arnold Bennett 

Pessimism is as much fun as optimism when you get used to it.

Anonymous

Oh, see the happy moron;
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron.
My God, perhaps I am.

Dr. Johnson

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not the capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In the long history of mankind there have not been so very many democratic republics, yet people lived for centuries without them and were not always worse off. They even experienced that ‘happiness’ we are forever hearing about, which was sometimes called pastoral or patriarchal.

Marcel Proust

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

M. Scott Peck

Life is difficult. This is one of the greatest truths because once we truly get it- we transcend it. Once we accept this, then life is no longer difficult. Because once we accept it, the fact that it is difficult no longer matters.

Immanuel Kant

It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.

Wittgenstein

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Malcom Muggeridge

The pursuit of happiness, which American citizens are obliged to undertake, tends to involve them in trying to perpetuate the moods, tastes and aptitudes of youth.

Cardinal Newman

God has determined, unless I interfere with His plan, that I should reach that which will be my greatest happiness. He looks on me individually, He calls me by my name, He knows what I can do, what I can best be, what is my greatest happiness, and He means to give it me.


I am reading (very slowly because of severe internet addiction) War and Peace and am loving it. War and Peace teaches much about how to live a happy life. This article explains. Leo Tolstoy said 

If you want to be happy, be.