Great Throughts Treasury

"Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when other share their happiness with them." - Duncan Stuart

"Philosophical happiness is to want little; civil or vulgar happiness is to want much and enjoy much." - Edmund Burke

"All happiness [is]… connected with the practice of virtue, which necessarily depends on the knowledge of truth." - Edmund Burke

"The two Antonines... governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue... Their united reigns are possible the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government." - Edward Gibbon

"The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience, unsullied by the reproach of remembrance of an unworthy action." - Edward Gibbon

"The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience." - Edward Gibbon

"The happiness of life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it." - Elbert Green Hubbard

"[It is those who have not really lived - who have left issues unsettled, dreams unfulfilled, hopes shattered, and who have let the real things in life (loving and being loved by others, contributing in a positive way to the other people’s happiness and welfare, finding out what things are really you) pass them by - who are most reluctant to die." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Happiness depends not on what happens, but on how we handle what happens. Our happiness is determined by how we interpret, perceive, and integrate what happens into our state of mind. And how we perceive things is determined by our commitment… Happiness comes from experiencing moments of happiness… Making comparisons is probably the shortest route to unhappiness. We can never be happy if we compare ourselves to others." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Our minds, our hearts, and our souls have been fully coded for happiness; all the wiring is built-in. Everyone is capable of finding happiness. All he or she has to do is look for it in the right places… In reality, happy people are the least self-absorbed and self-centered among us… True happiness is not the result of an event, it does not depend on circumstance. You, not what’s going on around you, determine your happiness." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL

"The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness." - Eric Hoffer

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

"There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool." - Francis Bacon

"The idle levy a very heavy tax upon the industrious when, by frivolous visitations, they rob them of their time. Such persons beg their daily happiness from door to door, as beggars their daily bread." - Francis Bacon

"There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool." - Francis Bacon

"The chief barrier to happiness is envy." - Frank Tyger

"The happiness of the human race in this world does not consist in our being devoid of passions, but in our learning to command them." - French Proverbs

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"An honest man feels that he must pay heaven for every hour of happiness with a good spell of hard unselfish work to make others happy. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." - George Bernard Shaw

"The two things that worthless people sacrifice everything for are happiness and freedom, and their punishment is that they get both only to find that they have no capacity for the happiness and no use for the freedom." - George Bernard Shaw

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

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." - George Bernard Shaw

"Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character." - George Santayana

"Reason and happiness are like other flowers - they wither when plucked." - George Santayana

"A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted." - George Santayana

"The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness." - George Santayana

"Happiness is the only sanction in life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment." - George Santayana

"The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the progress of the former by inculcating the practice of the latter." - George Washington

"Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected." - George Washington

"The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government." - George Washington

"It is a paradox of the acquisitive society in which we now live that although private morals are regulated by law, the entrepreneur is allowed considerable freedom to use - and abuse - the public in order to make money. The American pursuit of happiness might be less desperate if the situation were reversed." -

"Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness." - Graham Greene

"No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness." - Graham Greene

"The universal demand for happiness and the widespread unhappiness in our society (and there are but two sides of the same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we have begun to live in a labor society which lacks enough laboring to keep it contented. For only the animal labors, and neither the craftsman nor the man of action, has ever demanded to be "happy" or thought that mortal man could be happy." - Hannah Arendt

"Must love be ever treated with profaneness as a mere illusion? or with coarseness as a mere impulse? or with fear as a mere disease? or with shame as a mere weakness? or with levity as a mere accident? whereas it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness - mysterious, universal, inevitable as death." - Harriet Martineau

"Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness as well." - Henrik Ibsen, aka Henrik Johan Ibsen

"There is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving." - Henry Drummond

"In the pursuit of happiness half the world is on the wrong scent. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. Happiness is really found in giving and in serving others." - Henry Drummond

"There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry." - Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller

"The doctrine that Universal Happiness is the ultimate standard must not be understood to imply that Universal Benevolence is the only right or always best motive of action... it is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim; and if experience shows that the general happiness will be more satisfactorily attained if men frequently act from other motives than pure universal philanthropy, it is obvious that these other motives are reasonably to be preferred on Utilitarian principles." - Henry Sidgwick

"Reason shows me that if my happiness is desirable and a good, the equal happiness of any other person much be equally desirable." - Henry Sidgwick

"We cannot have happiness until we forget to seek it." - Henry Van Dyke

"Weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle; but the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means, and struggles nobly with his foe to achieve great deeds." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Good-nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it, and certainly to everybody who dwells with them, in so far as mere happiness is concerned." - Henry Ward Beecher

"True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training." - Henry Ward Beecher

"No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness - or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it." - Henry Ward Beecher

"The art op being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things." - Henry Ward Beecher

"The strength and the happiness of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going in that way, too." - Henry Ward Beecher

"The art of being happy is the power of extracting happiness from common things." - Henry Ward Beecher