Fleeting Happiness Quotes & Sayings

Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality is persistently at work, more or less, at every moment of our life: all other influences are temporal, incidental, fleeting, and subject to every kind of chance and change. This is why Aristotle says: It is not wealth but character that lasts.
And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon ourselves; for fortune may always change, but not character. Therefore, subjective blessings - a noble nature, a capable head, a joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well-constituted, perfectly sound physique, in a word, mens sana in corpore sano, are the first and most important elements in happiness; so that we should be more intent on promoting and preserving such qualities than on the possession of external wealth and external honor. — Arthur Schopenhauer

As I looked at her there among the pumpkins I was overcome with the color and the intesity of my life. In these moments we are driven to try and hoard happiness by taking photographs, but I know better. The improtant thing was what the colors stood for, the taste of hard apples and the existence of Lena and the exact quality of the sun on the last warm day in October. A photograph would have flattened the scene into a happy moment, whereas what I felt was rapture. The fleeting certainty that I deserved this space I'd been taking up on this earth, and all the air I had breathed. — Barbara Kingsolver

Happiness is temporary and fleeting ... Joy is the right goal. — Guy Kawasaki

Happy? That doesn't feel solid enough, somehow. Like it's fleeting or transient, and whenever something crappy happens, it's gone in a puff of smoke. I'm in love with someone I want to spend my life getting to know. He makes me feel safe and trusted and strong and beautiful, and all the things that give me validation that who I am is someone worth knowing. I guess it feels more bliss than happiness. — April White

Happy Endings are an illusion. Real life is filled with brief moments of fleeting happiness, but ultimately every life is a tragedy that ends in death and grief. — Oliver Gaspirtz

Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore happiness and cleave unto joy! Now, now, let's not sugar-coat things! Lust has a lot more to do with life and what is the good of life if you do not carry much lust inside of you at all times? And joy is a noble thing, but happiness though fleeting can be found every day and in every small little way! — C. JoyBell C.

Confronting the worst-case scenario saps it of much of its anxiety-inducing power. Happiness reached via positive thinking can be fleeting and brittle, negative visualization generates a vastly more dependable calm. — Oliver Burkeman

Happiness is fleeting - I think that's the main lesson I have learned. — Cate Blanchett

People need to realise what real happiness and success is, because success as an actor is fleeting. You can be up there one day and gone the next. — Chuck Norris

we inherited from our Eden-dwelling ancestors a sense of their pre-Fall happiness. Our hearts refuse to settle for sin, suffering, boredom, and purposelessness - we long for something better. Were we merely the product of natural selection and survival of the fittest, we'd have no grounds for believing any ancient happiness existed. But we are all nostalgic for an Eden we've only seen fleeting hints of. Unfortunately, — Randy Alcorn

Happiness comes in many forms - in the company of good friends, in the feeling you get when you make someone else's dream come true, or in the promise of hope renewed. It's okay to let yourself be happy because you never know how fleeting that happiness might be. — Lucas Scott

Happiness is as fragile and fleeting as a bubble soap. Water down the last dregs of happiness and turn them into bubbles to fill the void. It may nothing more than an illusion, but it was still better than the emptiness. — Kanae Minato

The point is to savor and treasure every moment, every breath. They are precious because they are limited. Nothing in abundance is ever held dear. It's cast off without any thought whatsoever. But happiness, victory, and life are sacred because they are fleeting and stingily measured. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

For the first time Saya understood how people can grow accustomed to war. Intensified by the stark contrast between life and death, fleeting moments of joy such as these could make one almost mad with happiness. — Noriko Ogiwara

I sighed. What is life but fleeting moments of happiness strung together on necklace of despair? — Marian Keyes

Happiness is a habit,
it's more than fleeting,
more than a disintegrating lozenge. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I became aware of just how fleeting the sense of happiness was, and how flimsy its basis: a warm restaurant after having come in from the rain, the smell of food and wine, interesting conversation, daylight falling weakly on the polished cherrywood of the tables. It took so little to move the mood from one level to another, as one might push pieces on a chessboard. Even to be aware of this, in the midst of a happy moment, was to push one of those pieces, and to become slightly less happy. — Teju Cole

Whatever the internal mechanism that moderated the human capacity for joy, mine had long been broken beyond repair. And I knew this was a poor substitute, a base shadow cast on the cave wall, a reflection in a tarnished mirror of ordinary things like happiness, love, and hope. But there were moments, fleeting moments, lost in the responses of my body to his, when it was almost enough. And, God, I wanted, I wanted. These crumbs of bliss. — Alexis Hall

Nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment. — Nicholas Sparks

Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the same as being happy
which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances ... If the sun is shining, stand in it
yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass
they have to because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. What you are pursuing is meaning
a meaningful life. There's the hap
the fate, the draw that is yours, and it isn't fixed, but changing the course of the stream, or dealing new cards, whatever metaphor you want to use
that's going to take a lot of energy. There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms. The pursuit isn't all or nothing
it's all AND nothing. — Jeanette Winterson

I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. — Peter Heller

Happiness is fleeting. Happiness is just the calm before the storm. And the happier you are, the more you have to lose when it hits. — Ranae Glass

Happiness isn't a constant. You get fleeting glimpses. You have to fight for those moments, but they make it all worth it. — Taylor Swift

You wake up one morning to realize life has, literally, passed you by. Even though the living felt long and filled with happiness beyond measure, the reliving brings to mind how fleeting time is compared to the stars in the sky above us. — Tymber Dalton

Mere pleasure is at best but fleeting; happiness is abiding, for in the recollection thereof is renewed. — James E. Talmage

Shane knew this wasn't love, at least not any kind of love that extended beyond the desires of two selfish bodies. No future, only fleeting pleasure. This was addiction, plain and simple ... irresistible need coupled with painful consequences and regret, moments of pure happiness like islands, spread out in a thrashing sea of insecurity and interminable waiting. — Cara McKenna

These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can't say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moth's wing in the dark. — Geraldine Brooks

There are as many forms of happiness as sorrow, though most prove fleeting. — Felix Dennis

I was so happy it was like a food, like I'd been stuffed with it, a foie gras goose of happiness; happy enough to know, fully, that I was happy, and foolishly, for one second, to dare the thought: "Imagine - imagine if each Saturday morning could be like this," and in the middle of the singing, I blushed, not even looking at her, because even just having it I knew there was something wrong about the thought. Another boundary crossing - an acknowledgment to myself, so fleeting but so dangerous, of how hungry I was. — Claire Messud

Cream - the richest, sweetest part of milk - is of course our first flavor, the taste, in a spoon, of life's first freshness and innocence, long before we ever encounter the taste of cooked food. And what is smoke - or ashes, with which one of the butters has been dusted - if not the very opposite of that freshness? There it is, innocence and experience mingled in a spoonful of ice cream. Bittor, whom no one would describe as a sunny man, has figured out a way to pass a fleeting, chill shadow of mortality over the formerly uncomplicated happiness of ice cream. A — Michael Pollan

Still, some nights I grieved. I grieved as much at what I knew must be the fleeting nature of my present happiness as any loss, any past. We lived on some edge, if we ever lived on a rolling plain. Who knew what attack, what illness. That doubleness again. Like flying: the stillness and speed, serenity and danger. — Peter Heller

Happy? Most of the time? Happiness is always a fleeting thing," he said, "It never rests upon anyone as a permanent state, though many of us persist in believing in the foolish idea that if this would just happen or that we would be happy for the rest of our lives. I know moments of happiness just as most other people do. Perhaps I have learned to find it in ways that would pass some people by. I feel the summer heat here at this moment and see the trees and the water and hear that invisible gull overhead. I feel the novelty of having company when I usually come here alone. And this moment brings me happiness. — Mary Balogh

After all, people desire immortality and do not wish to embrace the inescapable reality of death; they long for happiness and shy away from the contemplation of pain; they want to preserve their sense of self, not desconstruction it into fleeting and impersonal components. It is counterintuitive to accept that deathlessness is experienced each moment we are released from the deathlike grip of greed and hatred; that happiness in this world is only possible for those who realized that this world is incapable of providing happiness; that one becomes a fully individuated person only by relinquishing beliefs in an essential self. — Stephen Batchelor

The Creation The God separated a spirit from Himself and fashioned it into Beauty. He showered upon her all the blessings of gracefulness and kindness. He gave her the cup of happiness and said, "Drink not from this cup unless you forget the past and the future, for happiness is naught but the moment." And He also gave her a cup of sorrow and said, "Drink from this cup and you will understand the meaning of the fleeting instants of the joy of life, for sorrow ever abounds. — Kahlil Gibran

Our fragile, perishable bodies are not who we are. We are the sum of fleeting moments that belong to us for eternity. It is our choice and responsibility to create moments of beauty and grace, instead of despair and suffering. — Dorit Brauer

What makes [photography] obscene is its terrible cruelty. Happiness may be fleeting, but it's the reason we go on living. Photography is the joy that precedes pain, the moment of life just before death. — Nobuyoshi Araki

he is old enough now to know happiness for what it is: brief and fleeting, not a state to strive for, to seek to live in, but to catch when it comes, and to hold on to for as long as you can. — Laura Barnett

A moment is not complete until you realise it is fleeting... — Stuti Dhyani

Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh? — Francois Lelord

All the evils in the world come not because our desires for happiness are too strong, but because they are so weak that we settle for fleeting pleasures that do not satisfy our deepest souls, but in the end destroy them. The root of all evil is that we are the kind of people who settle for the love of money instead of the love of God (1 Timothy 6:10). — John Piper

Her life had been blessedly unburdened by happiness. When some period of fleeting contentment ended, Sofia Mendes did not register it as outrageous, but merely noted a return to life's normal condition. So, as the first weeks after the massacre passed, she simply counted herself lucky to be among others who did not weep and wail for the dead. — Mary Doria Russell

For what it's worth, I think happiness is a fleeting condition, not a permanent state of goddamn mind. I've learned that if you chase after moments of bliss here and there, sometimes those moments will sustain you through the shit. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it. — Matthieu Ricard

Life isn't the orderly black-and-white business we'd prefer it to be. It's messy and complicated and horribly blurred around the edges. All we can ever do is make the best of it. And maybe grab at those fleeting chances of happiness.' 'But never at the expense of anyone else's — Erica James

The antithetical or perhaps mirror image to sadness is the experience, similarly unique to one's late years, of a swift, mysterious wave of happiness, also causeless, but of much shorter duration. I cannot remember a time, before my sixties, when the consciousness of happiness would sweep over me and, like a shower of cold water when one is desperately overheated, offer me a passing sensation very close to glee.
Both sadness and fleeting happiness relate, I think, to mortality, to the consciousness of being old and of nearing the end of life ... these sensations ... surge up from the unconscious, to be a gift of long life or fortunate old age. Both sadness and happiness, but sadness more, are related to the fact that nothing of all this will endure for long. [p. 179] — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird's heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood, but while it lasted, — Kate Atkinson

Who can wish for happiness that is bought at the price of reason, whose fleeting pleasures are at least followed by regret, if not remorse? — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

That to truly know happiness is to know the fleeting nature of everything, joy, pain, safety and happiness itself. — Miriam Toews

The Cynics emphasized that true happiness is not found in external advantages such as material luxury, political power, or good health. True happiness lies in not being dependent on such random and fleeting things. And because happiness does not consist in benefits of this kind, it is within everyone's reach. moreover, having once been attained, it can never be lost. — Jostein Gaarder

And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzling over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own. — Hermann Hesse

There is another life both for you and for me,' said I. 'If it be the will of God that we should sow in tears now, it is only that we may reap in joy hereafter. It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a mother, and sisters, and friends who would be seriously injured by your disgrace; and I, too, have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be sacrificed to my enjoyment, or yours either, with my consent; and if I were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion, and I would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness - happiness sure to end in misery even here - for myself or any other! — Anne Bronte

the challenge of cheering a troubled soul is compelling, each fleeting smile worth a hundred hours of a lesser suitor's happiness. One — Kate Eberlen

Happiness will be fleeting if you constantly search for it in places that can be taken away. It's an inside job. — Nikki Rowe

From the moment of birth, every human being wants to discover happiness and avoid suffering. No differences in our culture or our education or our religion affect this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire joy and contentment. But so often these feelings are fleeting and hard to find, like a butterfly that lands on us and then flutters away. "The — Dalai Lama XIV

Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit happiness are precisely those on whom felicity, as mortals conceive it, always acts as a vomitive. — Charles Baudelaire

In fact, he argued, human beings need loyalty. It does not necessarily produce happiness, and can even be painful, but we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it, we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. They provide, ultimately, only torment. — Atul Gawande

Happiness is so rarely a part of my vocabulary, because for me it's so
fleeting — David Levithan

Happiness is like rising bubbles
delightful and inevitably fleeting. Joy is the oxygen
ever present. — Danielle LaPorte

Enduring happiness was only possible with equanimity. As long as our happiness depended on circumstances, it would be as fleeting and unreliable as the events themselves. — David Michie

Why are we here? We exist not to pursue happiness, which is fleeting, or outer accomplishment, which can always be bettered. We are here to nourish the self. — Deepak Chopra

Beautiful hours move so quickly. — Irene Hunt

Peace. Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual by nature. It depends on the happiness of others, and it is based on love and tenderness. We — Dalai Lama XIV

The air was swollen with music, shouting, and something I could not quite place- a feeling of happiness, but happiness with an edge, a sense of joy that was all the more meaningful because it was so fleeting. — Chelsey Philpot

Put money in it's place. Money can buy you cars, houses, trinkets, fleeting sex, shallow companionship, cheap attention, and unfulfilled status. However, it can't buy you peace, love, or happiness. — Ernie J Zelinski

Material progress and a higher standard of living bring us greater comfort and health, but do not lead to a transformation of the mind, which is the only thing capable of providing lasting peace. Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual in nature. It depends on the happiness of others and it is based on love and affection. — Dalai Lama

Happiness is overrated. It comes and goes just like sadness and miseryboth fleeting. What's important is peace. With all. — Hrithik Roshan

True happiness comes from gaining insight and growing into your best possible self. Otherwise all you're having is immediate gratification pleasure, which is fleeting and doesn't grow you as a person. — Aristotle.

Sports represent a shared vision of how we continue, as individual, team, or community, to experience a happiness or absence of care so intense, so rare, and so fleeting that we associate their experience with experience otherwise described as religious or we say the sports experience must be the tattered remnant of an experience which was once described, when first felt, as religious. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: 'This is it. This is it'. — Alan Lightman

Happiness is fleeting and life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us. — Christopher Hitchens