We are seldom happy with what we now have, but would go to pieces if we lost any part of it.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960CDN, TPV

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.  ~Charles Kingsley

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?  ~Albert Camus

Whatever you put aside to seek happiness, remember where you put it.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

The happy have whole days,
and those they choose.
The unhappy have but hours,
and those they lose.
~Colley Cibber

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.  ~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Happiness pulses with every beat of my heart. ~Terri Guillemets

On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.  ~William R. IngeCUL

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys.  If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.  ~Fyodor Dostoevsky

Happiness is always a by-product.  It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular.  But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.  ~Robertson Davies

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.  ~Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness is the soundtrack of my life. ~Terri Guillemets

Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.  ~Iris Murdoch

Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place.  But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.  ~E.L. KonigsburgFELI

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity.  Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.  ~Thomas Merton, 1955No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton, ch7: Being and Doing, p127; quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/18/happiness-balance

As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.  ~Andrew DelbancoLNW

There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

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

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.  ~William Shakespeare

Man must search for what is right, and let happiness come on its own.  ~Johann Pestalozzi

Real elation is when you feel you could touch a star without standing on tiptoe.  ~Doug Larson

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.  ~Dalai Lama

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.  ~George Bernard Shaw

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.  ~John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, 1873LCD

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.  ~Bernard de Fontenelle

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.  The way it actually works is the reverse.  You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.  ~Margaret Young

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.  ~Mark Twain

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.  Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.  ~Denis Waitley

When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.  ~Niccolo Machiavelli

There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.  ~Salvador Dali

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.  ~Janet Lane

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.  ~Robert S. Lynd

Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.  ~Gretta Brooker PalmerPIH

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse.  I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.  ~J.D. Salinger

Looking back on a happy life, one realizes that one was not happy all the time.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Joy is a flower that blooms when you do.  ~Author Unknown

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.  ~Epictetus

Every now and then,
when the world sits just right,
a gentle breath of heaven
fills my soul with delight…
~Hazelmarie ‘Mattie’ Elliott, A Breath of Heavenapr2009mail

This is my "depressed stance."  When you’re depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand.  The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you’ll start to feel better.  If you’re going to get any joy out of being depressed, you’ve got to stand like this.  ~Charles M. Schulz

Happiness is your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.  ~Johnny Carson

Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.  ~Christian Nestell Bovee

It is a comely fashion to be glad; Joy is the grace we say to God.  ~Jean IngelowCHN

Doing cartwheels in the green grass of happiness and skipping high towards the blue heavenly skies of joy! ~Terri Guillemets

There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.  ~Lady BlessingtonMCTO

A happy thought is like a seed that sows positivity for all to reap.  ~Miriam Muhammadcontest winner Sept 2009, twitter.com/flawlessmi/status/4316343357

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

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.  ~Eleanor RooseveltCUL

Seeking happiness, I passed many travelers headed in the opposite direction, seeking happiness.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely.  ~Georges DuhamelCUL

Jumping for joy is good exercise.  ~Author UnknownFELI

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.  ~Palmer Sondreal

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think.  Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.  ~A.A. Milne

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.  ~Don MarquisCUL

Happiness is an inside job. ~William Arthur Ward

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.  ~Josh Billings

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  ~Marcel Proust

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.  ~William Saroyan

Happiness is the resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other.  ~Norman Bradburn

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.  ~J.D. Salinger

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.  ~Joseph Roux

We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.  ~Walter Savage Landor

One should be either sad or joyful.  Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers.  ~Eugene O’NeillCUL

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.  ~Robert Frost

Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world.  Don’t go through life creaking.  ~H.W. BylesFELI

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.  ~Thornton Wilder

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.  ~James Openheim

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be happy, you must fancy that everything you have is a gift, and you the chosen, though you worked your tail off for every bit of it.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.  ~Jacques Prévert

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.  ~Ernest Dimnet

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.  ~Freya Stark, The Journey’s Echo

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.  ~Joseph Addison

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960CDN

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.  ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

Eden is that old-fashioned house we dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode until we drive away.
~Emily Dickinson

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.  ~Don Herold

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.  ~Mildred Barthel in Ensign

One filled with joy preaches without preaching.  ~Mother Teresa

If you search the world for happiness, you may find it in the end, for the world is round and will lead you back to your door.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.  ~John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1863LCD

Happiness is a form of courage.  ~Holbrook JacksonCUL

The secret to happiness is to put the burden of proof on unhappiness.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.comwas under name of Guilaume Apollinaire, per RB “The following are, word-for-word, original items I wrote for National Enquirer in 1984. They are today attributed to other writers, but I should like, if I may, to ‘borrow’ them back. April 2010

It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness.  Poverty and wealth have both failed.  ~Frank McKinney "Kin" HubbardCUL