This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. Some governments are deficient in both these qualities; most governments are deficient in the first." - Alexander Hamilton
"The amelioration of the condition of mankind, and the increase of human happiness ought to be the leading objects of every political institution, and the aim of every individual, according to the measure of his power, in the situation he occupies." - Alexander Hamilton
"A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him." - Alexander von Humboldt
"A peace must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him." - Alexander von Humboldt
"The formula for complete happiness is to be very busy with the unimportant." - Alfred Edward Newton
"Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured." - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
"He who waits for God fails to understand that he possesses Him. Believe that God and happiness are one, and put all your happiness in the present moment." - André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
"Happiness is something immediately perceptible." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"It is impossible to confer happiness on men, as something they can store up and possess." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"They stagnated in that false happiness which comes of great possessions; whereas true happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating new things." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in this warmth of human relations. Our sordid interests imprison us within their walls. Only a comrade can grasp us by the hand and haul us free." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Life does not agree with philosophy: there is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable." - Anton Chekhov, fully Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
"Everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else - except happiness, which is an end." - Aristotle NULL
"If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us... proper virtue will be perfect happiness." - Aristotle NULL
"Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is our actions - what we do - that we are happy or the reverse." - Aristotle NULL
"Doing well and happiness are the same thing." - Aristotle NULL
"States require property, but property, even though living beings are included in it, is no part of a state; for a state is not a community of living beings only, but a community of equals, aiming at the best life possible. Now, whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many; forms of government; for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government." - Aristotle NULL
"Happiness is found in the golden middle of two extremes." - Aristotle NULL
"There is no more important element in the formation of a virtuous character than a rightly directed sense of pleasure and dislike; for pleasure and pain are coextensive with life, and they exercise a powerful influence in promoting virtue and happiness in life." - Aristotle NULL
"True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods." - Aristotle NULL
"Happiness depends upon ourselves." - Aristotle NULL
"Interests are anchors, and I believe they will bring peace and even happiness in the end." - A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
"A happy marriage is a new beginning of life, a new starting-point for happiness and usefulness." - Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, known as Dean Stanley
"There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry and high life." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Care should be taken not to build the happiness of life upon a broad foundation -- which means not to require a great many things in order to be happy. Happiness on such a foundation is the most easily undermined. It offers many more opportunities for accidents; and accidents are always happening." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete, devotes his heart entirely to money." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings... The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings. The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"A smile costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive, without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he can get along without it, and none is so poor but that he can be made rich by it. A smile creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in business, and is the countersign of friendship. It brings rest to the weary, cheer to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and it is nature's best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give." - Author Unknown NULL
"Most people have the idea that happiness is something that can be manufactured. They do not realize that it can no more be manufactured than wheat or corn can be manufactured. It must grow; and the harvest will be like the seed. It will take every moment that we have lived of life's probation day to think on the true, honest, just, pure and lovely things of life. These are the things that will make us contented." - Author Unknown NULL
"Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get." - Author Unknown NULL
"Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself." - Author Unknown NULL
"If you pursue happiness, it may elude you, but if you focus on your family, your friends, the needs of others, your work and doing the very best you can, happiness will find you." - Author Unknown NULL
"The happiness of your life is in direct proportion to the character of your thoughts." - Author Unknown NULL
"Some pursue happiness - others create it." - Author Unknown NULL
"Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one’s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy fro the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own purpose. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. He must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing other to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell