Choose Your Own Happiness Quotes & Sayings

Happiness is a choice. You grieve, you stomp your feet, you pick yourself up and choose to be happy. — Lucy Lawless

There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we're not moving even our little finger to help them. It's in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it's a choice. So what will you choose, huh? — Yoleen Valai

The happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all. — Frances Wright

Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you. — Ralph Marston

Suffering sucks. Don't do it. Go home and love your wife. Go home and love yourself. Go home
and base your happiness on one thing and one thing only: freedom. Choose freedom, not suffering. Create a life of freedom, not wanting. Have some really good coffee and listen to the red-winged blackbirds in the marsh. Ignore the mosquitoes. — Laura Munson

When we become response-able - that is, when we learn to choose our responses freely and consciously - we are free to build a life of continuing growth and increasing happiness. — Sue Patton Thoele

'Bloo' is a compilation of a few songs I've written over the past year, inspired by the necessity of finding happiness in the people I choose to surround myself with. — Kacy Hill

Do you know that the United States is the only country in history that has ever used its own monogram as a symbol of depravity? Ask yourself why. Ask yourself how long a country that did that could hope to exist, and whose moral standards have destroyed it. It was the only country in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only country whose money was the symbol of man's right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, by the present standards of the world, if this is the reason for damning us, then we - we, the dollar chasers and makers - accept it and choose to be damned by that world. We choose to wear the sign of the dollar on our foreheads, proudly, as our badge of nobility - the badge we are willing to live for and, if need be, to die. — Ayn Rand

Would you ever have thought I might choose a lie for the sake of my own happiness? The Whisperer's version of happiness is an illusion
it doesn't take away your fears, it only lies about them, makes you temporarily believe you don't have them. And I know it's a lie, but what a powerful one! Maybe I'm not who I always thought myself to be. Maybe I'm the sort of person who will do anything to hear what I want to believe ... — Trenton Lee Stewart

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

Freedom and happiness come from understanding - and working with - our limits. Begin at once a program of self-mastery. Stick with your purpose. Do not seek external approval. Do not worry about anything outside of your control. The only things you command are your thoughts and actions. We choose our response. Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your own best self: for that does fall within your control. — Epictetus

Machinations are divined. Response is by nature, nurture, experience and if sought peer pressure. You are the owner of free will. Choose. — Truth Devour

I want to have my friend back, so I need to set him straight. I am by his side and he looks up to see me. I speak before he can say anything.
"Are you talking to me yet? Because I don't believe you're justified in your anger. I get to make my own decision about the relationships that I may or may not have. And I can choose at what pace I have that relationship. If you don't like it, then tough. You're happy - you have Bethany. Let me find my own happiness. You can't tell me what to do about this. I have to make up my own mind. Okay? — Isabelle Joshua

When happiness gets into your system, it is bound to break out on your face. While money can't buy happiness it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery. You always know, at this very moment, exactly what it would be to look, and feel, and be, and act completely Happy. — Adi Da

The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It's just like building muscles. — Timothy Ferriss

The pursuit of happiness is a matter of choice ... it is a positive attitude we choose to express. It is not a gift delivered to our door each morning, nor does it come through the window. And it is certain that our circumstances are not the things that make us joyful. If we wait for them to get just right, we will never laugh again. — Charles R. Swindoll

Whether your life is happy or not is your own choice.
Many people think I can't live a normal life because
I don't have arms or legs.
I could choose to believe that and give up trying.
I could stay at home and wait for others to take care of me.
Instead, I choose to believe that I can do anything,
and I always try to do things my own way.
I choose to be happy.
I am happy because I am always thankful. — Nick Vujicic

It isn't humanly possible for the things radical leftists want to bring about the desired results that they choose. They claim they want a utopian happiness, and they are further and further away from it the more successful they are. — Rush Limbaugh

Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There's going to be stress in life, but it's your choice whether you let it affect you or not. — Valerie Bertinelli

Happiness isn't something you have to search for in life. Happiness is a way of life you choose to have. — Javy Galindo

We see that happiness is not comfort. Happiness is the freedom to choose one's own way. — Chris Matakas

And I didn't choose it, Kat. I chose you. — Ally Carter

My message is that happiness is the first principle of life. But you must choose it. We all have pain, but suffering is a choice. You can be happier if you make some changes in your life. — Alexandra Stoddard

Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die. — Nicolaus Cusanus

This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy. — Susan Polis Schutz

Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them. Raise your awareness to your own inner strength and positivity. You are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life, or you can choose to be positive instead by focusing on the great things that are truly important. So talk about your blessings more than you talk about your problems. Just because you're struggling doesn't mean you're failing. Every great success requires some kind of worthy struggle to get there. — Anonymous

Happiness is a choice, To make a choice is utilizing your freewill to choose. Courage is getting out of your own way to let Happiness happen in your life in Abundance! — Sereda Aleta Dailey

Mental imbalance is about as acceptable as herpes. It's never going to be accepted. But really, it's a disease just like cancer. It just happens, and eats away all the good parts of your brain, like judgment and happiness and perception and memory and life. And you can die from depression just like any other disease. And it's not as if people choose it. So why is it still a joke of medicine? "She died of cancer." is a lot more socially acceptable to people than "She committed suicide. — Sarahbeth Purcell

Preface:
It was a bright, sunny normal day ... but it wasn't. The enemy lurked unseen, the ravenous beast it was, undetected and slowly moving forward. Unobtrusive, silent, ravenously consuming light, happiness, hope, and all that mattered. Darkness the love, hate the prize, evil intent the hope, bitterness the joy. No one wanted to see it. Blindness consumed the concerned ... Until the children came forward refusing to surrender the greatest power of all ... The power to choose their own Destiny! — M.K. McDaniel

The way to choose happiness is to follow what is right and real and the truth for you. You can never be happy living someone else's dream. Live your own. And you will for sure know the meaning of happiness. — Oprah Winfrey

Culturally, L.A. has always been a humid jungle alive with seething L.A. projects that I guess people from other places just can't see. It takes a certain kind of innocence to like L.A., anyway. It requires a certain plain happiness inside to be happy in L.A., to choose it and be happy here. When people are not happy, they fight against L.A. and say it's a "wasteland" and other helpful descriptions. — Eve Babitz

You have to choose whether to go to a restless sleep or to stay awake and fight for a blissful night rest. — Michael Bassey Johnson

So much in life depends on our attitude. The way we choose to see things and respond to others makes all the difference. To do the best we can and then to choose to be happy about our circumstances, whatever they may be, can bring peace and contentment. — Thomas S. Monson

Although we cannot command it, we choose joy, making a deliberate commitment to happiness (essentially another word for peace). — Wendy Beckett

Choose to put yourself first and make you a priority. It's not selfish, it's necessary. — Keysha Jade

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Choose to be a WINNER! — Sahara Sanders

I think happiness is a choice. I believe luck is your attitude. It sounds like a really annoying bumper sticker. But there is such a great truth in that. You choose how you want to feel about what happens to you. I could have been a miserable failure. I haven't had anybody looking over me, and I've found my own way through optimistic exploration and fire-burning mistakes. I am a very happy person with an extraordinary life, so I must be doing a lot of things right. I really believe when you peel away the layers, the worlds is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. — Drew Barrymore

Every day you have to choose and cultivate your own happiness. — Reese Witherspoon

When you choose being a loving soul, and give proper attention to your dreams without using your own will power, then you are in a process of creating a range of experiences which flow into your life harmoniously. — Hina Hashmi

Today, many will choose to live free of conditions and rules governing their own happiness. Why not you? Do not let another day go by where your dedication to other people's opinions is greater than your dedication to your own emotions! Today's a new day! — Steve Maraboli

The best thing a mother can give her child is a happy and fulfilled mom. There are many paths to happiness and fulfillment
follow your heart and choose your own way. — Lisa Hammond

You cannot convince someone to see something that they do not want to see, no matter how much you know it would improve their lives. You have to love and accept them exactly as they are today. If you cannot do that, you have to let them go and find their own way, in their own time, if they ever choose to do so.
Otherwise, you'll be giving them the power over your happiness, too. — Doe Zantamata

Tragedy may hit all of us in one way or another, but fate's not our enemy, Brooke. We are. By locking yourself away from the world, you choose your own mistakes and destroy any chance of ever finding happiness. You cannot control life, but you can chose who you are and what you make of it. — J.C. Reed

Be flexible. Be compassionate. Rules can never cure insecurity. Integrity matters. Never try to script what your relationships will look like. Love is abundant. Compatibility matters. You cannot sacrifice your happiness for that of another. Own your own shit. Admit when you fuck up. Forgive when others fuck up. Don't try to find people to stuff into the empty spaces in your life; instead, make spaces for the people in your life. If you need a relationship to complete you, get a dog. It is almost impossible to be loving or compassionate when all you feel is fear of loss. Trust that your partners want to be with you, and that if given the freedom to do anything they please, they will choose to cherish and support you. Most relationship problems can be avoided by good partner selection. Nobody can give you security or self-esteem; you have to build that yourself. — Franklin Veaux

You must be wondering how anyone could choose the left path and sacrifice their children. But it's not that simple, my dear, because when you decide to take the second path you never allow yourself to see reality as it is, without excuses. You tell yourself that if you don't pursue your own happiness, they'll suffer too; that you have a right to be happy and you only get one life; that it'll be better for them, they're young, they'll get over it. But the truth is, you make a choice and there is always a price to pay. — Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery. — Groucho Marx

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is. The lengths people go to - and the extremes and the conditions and the mental exercises and guilt and shame and happiness that everybody goes through - and what they'll do for sex is never-ending and mind-boggling and very interesting to me. And I don't think a lot of times people choose any of it. — John Waters

Take risks! That is really what life is about. We must pursue our own happiness. Nobody has ever lived our lives; ther are no guidelines. Trust your instincts. Accept nothing but the best. But then also look for it carefully. Don't allow it to slip between your fingers. Sometimes, good things come to us in a such a quiet fashion. And nothing comes complete. It is what we make of whatever we encounter that determines the outcome. What we choose to see, what we choose to save. And what we choose to remember. Never foget that all the love in your life is there, inside you, always. — Linda Olsson

What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness? — Amy Tan

The business of being happy requires making a conscious choice. People think being happy will just happen to them someday, if only they do this or that right. But it doesn't - you have to choose it. You choose happiness, you don't wait for it to choose you. — Bethenny Frankel

Therefore, for me, living true to my self may be defined as: Making the daily choices in all areas of my life that are in the best interests of my survival, evolution and prosperity, that aid the ongoing achievement of the highest physical, mental and spiritual objectives of which I am capable, that are based on the most correct assessment of reality I have available, and that honor the evolving truth of who I am and who I choose to be, all in the personal pursuit of freedom, function, fun, as well as the highest good of all. — Walt F.J. Goodridge

We can't choose our lives, but we can decide what to do with the joys or griefs we're given. — Paulo Coelho

By developing balance in your life, you will increase your energy, motivation, and your sense of satisfaction. In short, your happiness. Most people are as happy as they choose to be. May you choose to be very happy in 1998! SUCCESS to You ... — Gary Lockwood

But let me offer a word of caution. If you choose to give from your heart, be careful. The most incredible feeling might just overwhelm you. And if you continue in this behavior, that feeling may become permanent. — Steve Goodier

Living in love, gratitude and forgiveness, is peaceful and spiritually rejuvenating. Living under the emotional constraints of anger and resentment is draining and toxic to heart and soul. It can be difficult to let go of past hurts, but it can also be freeing and uplifting. More and more, i choose to live in love, gratitude and forgiveness. — Jaeda DeWalt

What is the Good for man? It must be the ultimate end or object of human life: something that is in itself completely satisfying. Happiness fits this description ... we always choose it for itself, and never for any other reason. — Aristotle.

Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure. — Henry James

You do know baby. You're just scared and that's okay. But don't throw away your
chance for happiness because you're afraid to take the leap or because you know someone ends up hurt. No matter what you choose, someone
was always going to end up heartbroken. But if there's a chance two hearts can be blissfully happy together in love, then that's worth the broken heart of one. They will mend. They will find love again and be happy. But if you do this, let them both walk away, the only heart that will break and
stay broken is yours baby. — Marie Coulson

You have a choice. A life of lonely regret or happiness with some pain along the way.
You choose. — Melissa Nathan

Personal happiness is so important, most choose to let someone else take care of it. — Terry Rossio

Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

Happiness is a conditioning of the mind and body so that happiness is totally within the way you perceive things and handle situations in life. You choose to be happy; happiness doesn't choose you. - Charmainism — Charmaine Smith Ladd

Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man - for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life. — Ayn Rand

Remember, life is for living and learning. So listen to your life and the lessons it offers. What choices must you make this day to help you move forward? Make your list of the things you can do right now to create what you want and begin to do the work. You can say yes to happiness, wholeness, and prosperity. You can live fully and creatively. You can claim your power to choose. Why not claim it now? — Susan L. Taylor

You can't care what other people think of whom you choose to love, or not to love. When it comes to your love life, it's NOT the time to be satisfying other people's opinions. The difference between what's good for you and what's good for everyone else is happiness. — Chrissy Anderson

She hesitated: "Do you love your wife?"
Mersault smiled: "That's not essential."
"You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters - all that matters, really - is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest - women, art, success - is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries."
"What matters to me is a certain quality of happiness. I can only find it in a certain struggle with its opposite - a stubborn and violent struggle ... — Albert Camus

You can choose how things affect you, and you can choose how you affect the world. The happiness that surrounds you is greatly affected by the choices you make every day. So be the change you want to see in the world. Don't tell others how to live their lives. Lead by example and let them follow you. Don't let your problems push you. Let your dreams lead you! — Anonymous

Either enjoy happiness or enjoy misery. The choice is yours. — Debasish Mridha

Have you not seen it? Whenever you choose happiness, you become the victim of unhappiness; whenever you want success, failure comes in; whenever you hope, frustration is waiting for you; whenever you cling to life, death comes and destroys. Have you not seen it happen every day, every moment? These are not opposites, they are together. When one sees them together, then what is there to choose? There is nothing to choose, one becomes choiceless. — Osho

Some people CHASE happiness. And some people CHOOSE happiness ... — Robert Holden

Some decide that happiness and glee are the same thing, they are not. When we choose happiness we accept the responsibility to lighten the load of someone else and to be a light on the path of another who may be walking in darkness. — Maya Angelou

Why don't you give up drinking?"
"Because I don't choose. It doesn't matter what a man does if he's ready to take the consequences. Well, I'm ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it's the only thing I've got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is no tomorrow. Time cannot be saved and spent. There is only today and how we choose to live it. The future is unknowable and unpredictable; it offers no clear path to happiness. Science will not save us. Each of us, then, needs to cobble together a daily routine filled with basic human pleasures, wedded, to be sure, to the best that modernity has to offer. It is a life of compromise rather than extremes. It is a touch of the old and a taste of the new. And cooking, it seems to me, offers the most direct way back into the very heart of the good life. It is useful, it is necessary, it is social, and it offers immediate pleasure and satisfaction. It connects with the past and ensures the future. Standing in front of a hot oven, we remind ourselves of who we are, of what we are capable of and how we might stumble back to the center of happiness. Effort and pleasure go hand in hand. — Christopher Kimball

We do not choose the one we fall in love with, and our perception of happiness is our own and is determined by what we experience ... — Julie Maroh

When we understand who we are, and how our realities work, we can choose more consciously to shape our lives in an optimal way.
Knowledge of oneself is the very key to a happy life. Happiness is not something outside of our own consciousness that needs to be earned, and achieved. It is a choice that needs to be supported by positive actions. It is not enough to say that we want to be happy. Our desire of happiness, love and peace, needs to be supported by our state of being. — Raphael Zernoff

When you choose your own way, you lose your happiness — Sunday Adelaja

From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life. — Anais Nin

It's gotten far easier to allow ourselves to hate than it is to choose to love. — Sam Killermann