111 Inspiring Happiness Quotes

In a world where we are constantly bombarded by stress, responsibilities, and challenges, taking a moment to focus on happiness can be profoundly transformative. Whether it's a gentle reminder to appreciate the small joys in life or an empowering affirmation that fuels your motivation, quotes about happiness have the unique ability to uplift our spirits and offer clarity amidst chaos. This curated collection of 111 Inspiring Happiness Quotes is designed to infuse your day with positivity and help you embrace the warmth and light that happiness brings. Let these words of wisdom guide you on your journey to a more joyful, fulfilled life.

1. “Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication.” - Algernon D. Black

2. “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.” - Robert Frost

3. “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” - Oprah Winfrey

4. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” - Mahatma Gandhi

5. “One is happy as a result of one's own efforts once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.” - George Sand

6. “I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

7. “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.” - Aldous Huxley

8. “Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.” - Robert Green Ingersoll

9. “Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.” - Mark Twain

10. “The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.” - Mark Twain

11. “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.” - Mother Teresa

12. “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

13. “Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.” - Marianne Williamson

14. “I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!” - Jean Anouilh

15. “We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.” - George Bernard Shaw

16. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” - Marcus Aurelius

17. “Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others...By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.” - Gordon B. Hinckley

18. “Je tiefer sich das Leid in euer Sein eingräbt, desto mehr Freude könnt ihr fassen.” - Khalil Gibran

19. “Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.” - Leo Tolstoy

20. “Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.” - John C. Maxwell

21. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” - Aristotle

22. “I'm a happy person. If you want to be around me, you can either choose to be happy too, or follow the signs to the nearest exit!” - Sharon Swan

23. “The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.” - Chuck Palahniuk

24. “When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away. ” - Anna Pavlova

25. “Be Sure To Notice When You're Happy” - Brenda Farrar-Ejemai

26. “It was always a relief when she came home to him. Like water or food. Like music or that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes out.” - Francesca Lia Block

27. “The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.” - Michael Pollan

28. “It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.” - Max Planck

29. “At any given moment the choice to be happy is present- we just have to choose to be happy.” - Steve Maraboli

30. “It's always something here - if there isn't a riot, then someone's usually trying to escape. The wasted effort helps me see the positives of imprisonment. Unlike those pulling their hair out in good society, here we don't have to feel ashamed of our day-to-day unhappiness. Here we have someone visible to blame - someone wearing shiny boots. That's why, on consideration, freedom leaves me cold. Because out there in the real world, freedom means you have to admit authorship, even when your story turns out to be a real stinker.” - Steve Toltz

31. “They luxuriated in the feeling of deep and all pervading satisfaction, a feeling of knowing absolutely that all was well with the world and them and that the world was not only their oyster it was also their linguine with clam sauce. Not only were all things possible, but all things were theirs. ” - Hubert Selby Jr.

32. “There were happy days, with watermelon, and sad days of whiskey.” - Lewis Nordan

33. “Today is Your Day to Dance Lightly with Life. It Really Is.” - Jonathan Lockwood Huie

34. “May those who follow their fate be granted happiness; may those who defy it be granted glory” - Mizuo Shinonome

35. “A truly radical resolution would be to embrace existence just as it is, as the only thing that matters, to proclaim that the world itself is heaven, made for our total enjoyment and fulfillment...” - Crimethinc. Workers' Collective

36. “Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.” - Carol Shields

37. “The process of discovering your fearless self is of refinement, not adding. The best way to reconnect with your freedom is to look at the rules you have that govern your freedom.” - Steve Maraboli

38. “Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead” - Neil Gaiman

39. “Are you happy?” - Ray Bradbury

40. “He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its derivatives from the English Language - happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean anyway? Why not just the word pleasure, which was far more... well, pleasant.” - Mary Balogh

41. “Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

42. “The golden rule of business is supply and demand. I venture to say that this is also the rule of happiness. When a balance is achieved between our desires and another's willingness to satisfy them, the result is a sympathetic, mutually rewarding relationship. (...) a thriving economy of love.' - character Mike Lambeth” - Caroline Adderson

43. “those who do not know how to see the precious things in life will never be happy.” - Alex Flinn

44. “Mankind were intended to be happy... that government being only the means of securing freedom and happiness to the people, whenever it deviates from this end, and their freedom and happiness are in great danger of being irrevocably lost, the government is no longer entitled to their allegiance. ("The Principles of an American Whig"-1777)” - James Iredell

45. “The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.” - James Matthew Barrie

46. “Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.” - Francois Lelord

47. “And from the midst of cheerless gloomI passed to bright unclouded day.” - Emily Brontë

48. “Peace is something like happiness; you cannot say "I will be happy when..." and you can't say "I will be peaceful when..." Your happiness shouldn't depend on the situation you're in nor on the circumstances that surround you. In the same breath, you cannot wait for everything around you to become peaceful in order for you to say "I am peaceful." In both happiness and peace, there is a heart of strength, determination and steadfastness; a heart that has the power to make things happen. You have to be at peace. You have to be happy. Now.” - C. JoyBell C.

49. “The only means by which one could attain complete happiness is to avoid living in constant expectation of it. It's the expectation that causes our unhappiness and consequent bitterness about life” - Mohammed Naseehu Ali

50. “I have been poisoned in your love and now I need antidote Jacqueline.L.J! <3” - Omaid olovejlj Zazai

51. “Happiness is the most tired word in any language.” - Erol Ozan

52. “Friendship is thinking of the other person first.” - George Alexiou

53. “Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own.” - L.M. Montgomery

54. “The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.” - Mark Nepo

55. “Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)” - Peter S. Beagle

56. “Many people are so poor that the only thing they have is money. Cultivate your spiritual growth.” - Rodolfo Costa

57. “The thought of all that happiness was hard to bear. What's the point of happiness when all it does is throw the facts of dying into clear relief?” - Sebastian Faulks

58. “Pats cīnies, palīdz, domā, spried un sver,Pats esi kungs, pats laimei – durvis ver!” - Rainis

59. “When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves.” - Jess C. Scott

60. “For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?” - Joyce Carol Oates

61. “As we drove off into the moonless night, raindrops danced through our headlights like the fireflies of my childhood. I silently cursed the frailty of happiness and doubted whether it ever existed for me. I could remember happier times, though, and those memories fluttered about my mind like fireflies, beckoning with their elusive splendor. But chasing memories held no more promise than catching fireflies. The pursued feelings either vanished or lost their magic upon examination, hardly the green-glowing beauty seen at a distance. So I looked ahead of me and dreamed on into the darkness, hoping to one day find someone who would love me.” - Scott Gaille

62. “Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.” - Groucho Marx

63. “Some people appear to be happy, but they simply don't give the matter much thought. Others make plans: I'm going to have a husband, a home, two children, a house in the country. As long as they're busy doing that, they're like bulls looking for the bullfighter: they react instinctively, they blunder on, with no idea where the target is. They get their car, sometimes they even get a Ferrari, and they think that's the meaning of life, and they never question it. Yet their eyes betray the sadness that even they don't know they carry in their soul. Are you happy?” - Paulo Coelho

64. “We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times was till I left, but I guess that's the way of it” - Ron Rash

65. “I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.” - Toni Morrison

66. “When you let go of past pain, believe in yourself, and follow your dreams—you can find true happiness!” - Casi McLean

67. “The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.” - Josef Pieper

68. “I look at the hundreds of algebra problems facing me in the next three days.And here I thought I’d figured out the equation to my happiness.” - Elizabeth Eulberg

69. “Your purpose is your why.” - Deborah Day

70. “80% of man's happiness is based on love - love for others, love for self, love for family, love for friends, love for work, love for nature, and love for being loved.” - Ogwo David Emenike

71. “The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

72. “No more need to rob Peter to pay Paul with Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

73. “There is no eleventh hour with Cosmic Ordering, only the golden hour.” - Stephen Richards

74. “Cosmic Ordering success sticks to you like mud to a blanket.” - Stephen Richards

75. “Everybody talks about being rich, Cosmic Ordering does something about it.” - Stephen Richards

76. “Often the only difference between success and failure is not using Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

77. “There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.” - Edith Wharton

78. “Today you will have countless opportunities to take action towards any dream or goal you've ever had. No matter how long you’ve waited, it’s never too late. Let today be the day you give life to your dreams and goals. Don't throw away another day!” - Steve Maraboli

79. “People like to say love is unconditional, but it's not, and even if it was unconditional, it's still never free. There's always an expectation attached. They always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won't be happy unless you are ... I just don't want that responsibility.” - Katja Millay

80. “Enttäuschung und Frustration werden [...] alle erleben, die sich wie im Märchen danach sehnen, Glück in einem Schlaraffenland zu finden ... Nur, dass unser Schlaraffenland nicht ein großer Berg von süßem Brei ist ... wir haben andere Fantasien und Bilder von Fülle und Erfülltheit in einem imaginären Schlaraffenland, das nur eben unglücklicherweise niemals dort ist, wo wir tatsächlich leben. Vielmehr leben wir mit der Hoffnung auf ein Glück, das uns das Schicksal irgenwann einmal gewähren müsse. [...] So können wir das Schlaraffenland je nach unserer eigenen Fasson ausgestalten - und wir tun es. Privat und auch gesellschaftlich.Doch sobald wir anfangen, uns mit diesem Glücksmodell anzufreunden, und gespannt darauf warten, wie im Lotto das große Los zu ziehen, werden wir auf einem Weg sein, wo das Glück ganz bestimmt nicht zu uns findet! Wir bleiben hungrig und ungesättigt. Denn geheimnisvollerweise ist das Glück dort, wo wir Bezogenheit leben - selbst in dem unspektatulärsten Tun des Alltags.” - Joachim Gauck

81. “One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense. If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of a livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful. Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever. I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to man’s constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account. Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect.” - Bertrand Russell

82. “It's easy to be heavy; hard to be light.” - G.K. Chesterton

83. “Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau

84. “I found in myself the ability to give everything, to lay the whole show on the line. In that ability is hidden happiness, and all men have it, lurking somewhere..” - Dick Dorworth

85. “There is nothing worse for the lying soul than the mirror of reality.” - Steve Maraboli

86. “True happiness is always self-forgetful: it loses itself in the object of its joy. As the joy of the Holy Ghost fills us, and we rejoice in God the Holy One, through our Lord Jesus Christ. [. . .]Love and joy ever keep company. Love, denying and forgetting itself for the brethren and the lost, living in them, finds the joy of God. ‘The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Ghost.” - Andrew Murray

87. “Nothing lasts forever, Neither bad nor good” - Vijay Dhameliya

88. “You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it--which is what matters most.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

89. “How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.” - Toni Morrison

90. “I have given up considering happiness as relevant.” - Edward Gorey

91. “Being happy is easy. Easy until you start believing that happiness is tied to a relationship, a job, your income, a product you buy, fame, a status, or any of a number of things that you don't currently have in your possession. Being happy is easy, as long as you understand everything you need to be happy exist in you already. You just have to stop looking out and start looking in to find it.” - Sean King

92. “Je suis vivant. Et pendant que je mange, je ne fais rien d'autre que manger. Quand je marcherai, je marcherai, c'est tout. Et s'il faut un jour me battre, n'importe quel jour en vaut un autre pour mourir. Parce que je ne vis ni dans mon passé ni dans mon avenir. Je n'ai que le présent, et c'est lui seul qui m'intéresse. Si tu peux demeurer toujours dans le présent, alors tu seras un homme heureux.” - Paulo Coelho

93. “Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

94. “Uneori uit unde mă aflu şi zâmbesc aşa, fără motiv. Câteodată sunt vesel. Vesel de tot. Pentru că uit de mine. Mă pierd pe undeva, în vreun loc depărtat, cum ai uita o carte pe fereastră.” - Marin Sorescu

95. “That’s what love is like: mother of the greatest bliss and stepmother of the most tragic misery.” - Stefanos Livos

96. “My soul feels reborn each time I see you; falling in love with you again and again.” - Steve Maraboli

97. “We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.” - Alain De Botton

98. “Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be commited to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness tohappen. You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of “I”, to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

99. “Two years hence you will be as calm as I am now, - and far, far happier, I trust, for you are a man and free to act as you please” - Anne Brontë

100. “It is in our power to educate all the children of the world to become a little better as people, a little happier.” - Shinichi Suzuki

101. “She remembered something that am old boyfriend had said to her. One that she didn't want to let go of at the time. One person can't be happy enough for the both of us” - Chris Manby

102. “Sometimes in life there's no problem and sometimes in there is no solution. In this space - between these apparent poles - life flows.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

103. “He looked both proud and guilty of something. As if happiness was a reward and he wasn't sure he'd done enough to deserve it.” - Rupert Thomson

104. “Depression: the healthy suspicion that modern life has no meaning and that modern society is absurd and alienating.” - Neel Burton

105. “... the only thing that makes life worthwhile is loving orher people and being loved by them. - Pia Obrian” - Susan Mallery

106. “Was he happy? One would ask that question in vain. A question like this makes sense only when applied to creatures who are rich in alternative possibilities, so that the actual truth can be contrasted with partly real probabilities and reflect itself in them.” - Bruno Schulz

107. “Success follows those who champion a cause greater than themselves.” - George Alexiou

108. “Happiness is an inside job” - William Arthur Ward

109. “Love moves in sync with the cadence of forgiveness, sings in tune with the melody of acceptance, and dances in rhythm with the music of companionship.” - Steve Maraboli

110. “Most people are resentful of the happiness of others and yet we seem to seek validation from others in order to allow our own happiness… it’s easy to see the problem with this system.” - Steve Maraboli

111. “Happiness was my choice, and though it is hard-won, I am the only person who can stand in the way of it.” - Stephanie Nielson