Fully Happy Quotes & Sayings

Happy are those who live under a discipline which they accept without question, who freely obey the orders of leaders, spiritual or temporal, whose word is fully accepted as unbreakable law; or those who have, by their own methods, arrived at clear and unshakeable convictions about what to do and what to be that brook no possible doubt. I can only say that those who rest on such comfortable beds of dogma are victims of forms of self-induced myopia, blinkers that may make for contentment, but not for understanding of what it is to be human. — Isaiah Berlin

Today something unusual happened; I was walking without even knowing, where I was going. I was smiling without any cause. I was just happy without reasons. I can tell you that birds do sing, leaves of trees, do dance, and it's beautiful. I am, a complete nature boy! Maybe, I was fully satisfied that sunlight was falling on my cheek. I got the power to love myself, nature and rest of humankind. Cheers, Everyone! — Santosh Kalwar

I have always been tormented by the image of multiplicity of selves. Some days I call it richness, and other days I see it as a disease, a proliferation as dangerous as cancer. My first concept about people around me was that all of them were coordinated into a WHOLE, whereas I was made up of multiple selves, of fragments. I know that I was upset as a child to discover that we had only one life. It seems to me that I wanted to compensate for this by multiplying experience. Or perhaps it always seems like this when you follow all your impulses and they take you in different directions. In any case, when I was happy, always at the beginning of a love, euphoric, I felt I was gifted for living many lives fully. It was only when I was in trouble, lost in a maze, stifled by complications and paradoxes that I was haunted or that I spoke of my "madness," but I meant the madness of the poets. — Anais Nin

Be grateful for each moment we have and be happy, but more than anything live it fully. — Valerie Harper

It is in your hands to make life miserable or happy. No religion, spiritual leaders or knowledge will ever make you fully satisfied. — Santosh Kalwar

If there is a secret, a carefully guarded secret, to human happiness, it is that one expressed in a seventeenth-century catechism that says, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." The secret to happiness is found in obedience to God. How can we be happy if we are not obedient? How can we be obedient if we do not know what it is we are to obey? Thus the top and the tail of it is that happiness cannot be fully discovered as long as we remain ignorant of God's Word. — R.C. Sproul

Every generation has the illusion that things were easier and better in a simpler past. Dead wrong. Things are better today than at any time in human history. Our primal ignorance is what keeps us whacking each other over the head with sticks, and not what allows us to paint a Mona Lisa or design a space shuttle. The 'primal ignorance that keeps us happy' gives rise to obesity and global warming, not antibiotics or the Magna Carta. If human kind flourishes rather than flounders over the next thousand years, it will be because we fully embraced learning and reason, and not because we surrendered to some fantasy about returning to a world that never really was. — Daniel Todd Gilbert

I think acting is really fully adapting to your surroundings, to your emotions, to the people that you're working with, to being tired, to wanting to go home, to being lonely, to being happy. I mean, it's adapting. For me, it is anyway. And trusting. Adapting and trusting. That's my format right there. — Charlize Theron

Trying to live in the past didn't work for me, and it's only now that I fully realize I'm incredibly lucky it didn't. Because it would have been all too sad to miss out on right now. That would have turned the past into a fraud. It would have meant all my happy memories were a lie. It would have meant all that time and all that love was a waste, leading up to a wasted future. It would have been the ultimate betrayal of everything I thought my whole life was about and everyone I cared about. All the people who loved me, in all the times and places of my life - all the people who made a lover out of me - they would have all been wrong about me. And it could have happened easily, just like that. It's scary to think of how I could have gotten stuck pining for the past. I was lucky to get a second chance. I thought I was too late, but it turns out I was just in time. — Rob Sheffield

A happy and healthy child is one who is loved without reservation and understood without judgment. But to fully understand, accept, and appreciate our child's uniqueness, we must first come to know who he or she really is. Discovering our child's inborn and innate personality is the first, crucial step. — Paul D. Tieger

It hurts to love someone this much. I feel each place where our minds meet, and each little place were they don't, until we talk things over and line up again ... I've never had anything like this with anyone else. Now I'm never fully happy anymore unless you're with me. — Caragh M. O'Brien

To live as fully, as completely as possible, to be happy ... is the true aim and end to life. — Llewellyn Powers

One of my dinner companions invited me on a strip-club excursion. I demurred, spoiled by the erotic revues of Anhedonia, where the performers remain fully clothed but get emotionally naked, delivering monologues about their top-shelf disappointments, and times when they were almost happy. Hard to enjoy American-style strip clubs after that. Once you go bleak, you never go back. — Colson Whitehead

Now is the moment to live fully, and live in happiness. If there is no happiness today, how can you expect to be happy tomorrow? — Satish Kumar

Rhythm, symmetry, and a happy combination of elegance and utility - a blend often desired in later days of hope and struggle - these have been fully attained, and with them a delight in quiet communion with Nature, expressing as she does the sense of beauty in orderliness. — Marie-Luise Gothein

Watching snowing would be much greater if there were no homeless people! Man can never be fully happy and comfortable till all men become happy and comfortable! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty - and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima. — Kurt Vonnegut

When I was at Baylor, I wasn't fully happy because I couldn't be all the way out. It feels so good saying it: I am a strong, black lesbian woman. — Brittney Griner

By fully tuning in to the now moment in your life, you will discover that you always have enough to enjoy every moment of your life. The only reason you have not been happy every instant is that you have been dominating your consciousness with thoughts about something you don't have- or trying to hold on to something that you do have but which is no longer appropriate in the present flow of your life. — Ken Keyes Jr.

Here, I say, I have amused myself in reading and thinking of my absent friend, sometimes with a mixture of pain, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes anticipating a joyful and happy meeting, whilst my heart would bound and palpitate with the pleasing idea, and with the purest affection I have held you to my bosom 'til my whole soul has dissolved in tenderness and my pen fallen from my hand. How often do I reflect with pleasure that I hold in possession a heart equally warm with my own, and fully as susceptible of the tenderest impressions, and who even now whilst he is reading here, feels all I describe. — David McCullough

With an open trade in corn and a fixed duty we should have every man in the country fully fed and happy, instead of our present situation in which so much distress exists - distress of our own producing. — Joseph Hume

Everyone needs peace of mind, inner-happiness and joyful relationships but most people don't prioritize these. Do you set goals or invest in learning to achieve these?
If you focus only on career, social and financial goals then you will never be fulfilled or fully successful! — Maddy Malhotra

He had used it as the epigram to his 1967 book 'To Seek a Newer World,' and it expressed two pillars of his faith: that everyone has a duty to alleviate suffering, and that no one can live a fully happy life while surrounded by the unaddressed misery of others. — Thurston Clarke

I have a sort of sisterly feeling toward him [Ben Affleck]. I want him to do well and grow up and be a happy person and a fully realized man. — Gwyneth Paltrow

In March several of the Mandrakes threw a loud and raucous party in greenhouse three. This made Professor Sprout very happy.
"The moment they start trying to move into each other's pots, we'll know they're fully mature," she told Harry. — J.K. Rowling

What is it with young women and exclamation points and smiley faces! So afraid of appearing somber, always wanting to appear light and happy and sparkling, even when they are dying inside. Not ever being able to escape the mask that smiles. She wants to write, really write someday. But she is not fully formed. So she does not write. Not really. Unless attempting to live is a form of attempting to write. The agony of becoming. This is what she experiences. The young girl. She would like to be someone, anyone else. She wants, vaguely, to be something more than she is. But she does not know what that is, or how one goes about doing such a thing. — Kate Zambreno

Materialism, to some extent, requires that the consumer is not fully present or happy. In the moments of a spending frenzy you feel more alive so you spend, spend, spend in the pursuit of happiness. For a short period the acquisition of clothes, shoes, a house, a car, a new kitchen, anchors your life into some place of meaning. — Patsy Rodenburg

In order to select a gear, the clutch pedal must be depressed - I don't mean 'not happy', I mean pushed fully to the floor! — Martin Woodward

Do something you would be proud to have in your obituary, but not something that will haunt you until that day.
Live for now, hope for later, and remember then.
As you grow older always remember to never fully grow up.
This is real.
Stand up and look at the skin you're in.
Don't let the others turn you green, think about it, and make it how you want.
Now you're done reading this, do something that make to make who you are make you happy. — Audrey Regan

Winning is taking the talent or potential you were born with, and have since developed, and using it fully toward a goal or purpose that makes you happy. — Denis Waitley

I am fully aware that the things I do are construed as absolute craziness. But in actuality, we are just having fun in God's presence. We enjoy the happy presence of God and people get free from religion, so they stop taking themselves so seriously. Freedom from pride is liberating and empowering. The Lord loves to mock religion through us, because religion grieves Him tremendously. What we are never doing is trying to make a formula out of these crazy antics. In fact, most of these antics are gloriously deriding religious formula! Our antics are so crazy in fact that you would have to be a complete nutjob to think smoking a baby Jesus doll is the latest tool to get you to a new level with God. These silly acts don't get us filled with the Spirit, nor are we trying to start a new denomination with this stuff. We do lots of fun, goofy things because we are already in the Spirit by His grace, and we've been set free from the performance-oriented version of Christianity. — John Crowder

Du Bois didn't fully understand democracy. It seemed pointless to give people the right to self-determination when so few had any interest in it. Now that humanity had reached a certain level of comfort and people didn't really seem to want to think for themselves, he believed it was better that they just did what they were told. Then everyone would be happy. — Gavin G. Smith

We have negative mental habits that come up over and over again. One of the most significant negative habits we should be aware of is that of constantly allowing our mind to run off into the future. Perhaps we got this from our parents. Carried away by our worries, we're unable to live fully and happily in the present. Deep down, we believe we can't really be happy just yet - that we still have a few more boxes to be checked off before we can really enjoy life. We speculate, dream, strategize, and plan for these "conditions of happiness" we want to have in the future; and we continually chase after that future, even while we sleep. We may have fears about the future because we don't know how it's going to turn out, and these worries and anxieties keep us from enjoying being here now. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Speaking of, "When is your birthday?" Strider asked Kaia.
Wide silver-gold eyes swung to him. "You don't know?"
"No."
Pouting, she twirled a strand of her hair. "How can you not know?"
"Do you know mine?" he asked.
"Of course I do. It's the day you met me.
As good a day as any. "No, it's not, because that was a trick question, baby doll. I don't actually have a birthday. I was created fully formed, not born." True story.
"You can be such a moron." She threw up her arms, exasperated. "Don't argue with me about this kind of thing. I'll always be right. Seriously. You were dead until you met me and we both know it. Which means I brought you to life. So, happy belated birthday. — Gena Showalter

By accepting yourself and being fully what you are, your presence can make others happy. — Jane Roberts

Love isn't the expectation that eventually you'll end up in heartache; it's the expectation that you can fully trust another human being with everything and still hope for a happy ending. — Rachel Van Dyken

One of the most significant negative habits we should be aware of is that of constantly allowing our mind to run off into the future. Perhaps we got this from our parents. Carried away by our worries, we're unable to live fully and happily in the present. Deep down, we believe we can't really be happy just yet - that we still have a few more boxes to be checked off before we can really enjoy life. — Thich Nhat Hanh

When the options are few, we can be happy with what we choose since we are confident that it is the best possible choice for us. When the options are practically infinite, though, we believe that the perfect choice for us must be out there somewhere and that it's our responsibility to find it. Choosing can become a lose-lose situation: if we make a choice quickly without fully exploring the available options, we'll regret potentially missing out on something better; if we do exhaustively consider all the options, we'll expend more effort (which won't necessarily increase the quality of our final choice), and if we discover other good options, we may regret that we can't choose them all. — Sheena Iyengar

Empowered Women 101: If he can't tell other women that he is happily married and acts in a way that suggests he isn't fully committed then he isn't happy. He is keeping his foot in the door for a better opportunity should it not work out with you. Real women don't need to investigate. They invest in their self confidence and worth by not allowing their man to disrespect them. They are not afraid to ask themselves the tough questions: Why am I letting this man humiliate me and value me less than others? Why have I allowed myself to become a doormat? — Shannon L. Alder

Don't be gloomy. Do not dwell on unkind things. Stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. Even if you are not happy, put a smile on your face. 'Accentuate the positive.' Look a little deeper for the good. Go forward in life with a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face, with great and strong purpose in your heart. Love life. — Gordon B. Hinckley

There's a nonsensical dichotomy that exists within you after you break up with someone - especially if it's someone you loved deeply. A large part of you hopes they'll move on, be happy, follow their dreams to the fullest.
That's the side you show the world.
But a smaller part of you, whether you admit its existence or not, secretly and selfishly yearns for a reality in which that person would never move on. Never forget your love, or replace you with someone else; never be fully complete again, without you by their side.
That's the side we hide away, the innermost part of ourselves that we push down below the socially-acceptable responses to heartbreak. — Julie Johnson

People who love each other fully and truly are the happiest people in the world. They may have little, they may have nothing, but they are happy people. Everything depends on how we love one another. — Mother Teresa

College campuses are populated by and endless throng of happy, dancing, fully conversational creatures who seem to exist from the sole purpose of reinforcing your utter alienation. I tried to take comfort in the fact that hell is other people and ultimately we are alone anyway. — Jacqueline Novak

Justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; and I recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humour, one glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica - she looked so frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any professions I never heard one pass her lips, but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition was gay and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all excellence and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her. — Mary Shelley

You are born with the yearning arrow, my Glynna, though you are not yet fully aware of it. It is not a happy thing to possess, for nothing on earth - no goal, no person how ever beloved - will answer it. It points to the sky and to the heavens and the stars and when it cannot reach them, it must fall back to pierce your heart. — Isobelle Carmody

I think that, on the one hand, our audience, our culture is so savvy now to an assumption that teaser effects are not fully representative of the final product. But in the same breath, I would say there's no shot in the teaser that I'm not really happy with. — Shawn Anthony Levy

Death was the Earth. Having sprung from her, the budding forms of life attempted to liberate themselves from her embrace. They set their sights on the free and open spaces. Death let them do as they wished, because she was very partial to the idea of life. She contented herself with keeping a watchful eye on her flock, and when she felt that they were fully ripe she devoured them up as if they were so many morsels of sugar. The she lay back and slowly digested the nourishment that would replenish her womb, happy and satiated as a pampered cat. — Roland Topor

Vronsky meanwhile, despite the full realization of what he had desired for so long, was not fully happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness is in the realization of desires. — Leo Tolstoy

If we have fear, we can't be completely happy. If we're still running after the object of our desire, then we still have fear. Fear goes together with craving. We want to be safe and happy, so we begin to crave a particular person or object or idea (such as wealth or fame) that we think will guarantee our well-being. We can never fully satisfy our craving, so we keep running and we stay scared. If you stop running after the object of your craving - whether it's a person, a thing, or an idea - your fear will dissipate. Having no fear, you can be peaceful. With peace in your body and mind, you aren't beset by worries, and in fact you have fewer accidents. You are free. If — Thich Nhat Hanh

If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present. — Roy Bennett

Sonia lives her life fully. If she dies tomorrow, she'll die happy. If she lives the way you want her to live, she'll die miserable. So leave her alone, okay? — Sonia Sotomayor

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

It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. you feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. — Yann Martel

To be happy you have to fulfill your nature. That's what Aristotle taught so many centuries ago, that the road to happiness isn't to go drink more or consume more. The road to happiness is to fully develop your abilities, and then apply them to do good. — Charles Koch

There can be many different views of what Heaven is like, because Heaven is whatever makes each person eternally and fully happy. — Mattie J.T. Stepanek

He withhold that which I believe will fully nourish me? Why do I live in this sense of rejection, of less than, of pain? Does He not want me to be happy? — Ann Voskamp

I had never seen anything like New York, and its newness held the promise of my future: dense with the experience I craved - romantic, urbane, intellectual. Looking back on that moment, I believe I was saved from disappointment by the nature of my "great expectations." I honestly wasn't burdened with conventional notions of finding security and happiness. At that time of my life, even when I was "happy," it wasn't because I expected it. That was for characters less romantic than myself. I didn't expect to be rich, well fed, and kindly treated by all. I wanted to live deeply and fully, to embrace whatever the city held for me. — Siri Hustvedt

We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation
the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered
is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture. — Marjorie Garber

Francis Spufford, using very contemporary idiom, calls for the same thing in this way. When discussing our sinfulness, he says: What we're talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It's our active inclination to break stuff, "stuff" here including . . . promises, relationships we care about and our own well-being and other people's. . . . [You are] a being whose wants make no sense, don't harmonize: whose desires deep down are discordantly arranged, so that you truly want to possess and you truly want not to at the very same time. You're equipped, you realize, more for farce (or even tragedy) than happy endings. . . . You're human, and that's where we live; that's our normal experience.180 Until we fully acknowledge the chaos within us that the Bible calls sin, we live in what Calvin calls "unreality. — Timothy J. Keller

When you're able to see that and be grateful, life will be much easier and more exciting. Life offers opportunities to be happy as many as to be sad. The decision is fully yours. Be sure that you choose the right choice. (p.261) — Grace Melia

When church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued. — Isaac Backus

A beautiful bright blue sky; up above so high; how happy i am; to feel fully satisfied. — Santosh Kalwar

You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love & affection. — Gautama Buddha

I want a gun, Happy said immediately. "A really big gun. I want a fully functioning Death Star gun."
"Not even if Godzilla himself were to show up," said JC. — Simon R. Green

And incredulity, that too was a large part of being happy. I mean that euphoric inability fully to believe in one's own simple luck. There I was, suddenly, with a girl in my arms, figuratively, at least, doing the things that grown-ups did, holding her hand, and kissing her in the dark, and, when the picture had ended, standing aside, clearing my throat in grave politeness, to allow her to pass ahead of me under the heavy curtain and through the doorway out into the rain-washed sunlight of the summer evening. I was myself and at the same time someone else, someone completely other, completely new. — John Banville

As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial. — Anton Chekhov

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future. — Andre Gide

Everyone was pretending to be bored to tears, or maybe they actually were, but Quentin wasn't. He was unexpectedly happy, though he instinctively kept it a secret. In fact he was so fully of joy and relief he could barely breathe. Like a receding glacier the ordeal of the Beast had left behind a changed world, jumbled and scraped and raw, but the earth was finally putting up new green shoots again. — Lev Grossman

I only really and truly fully relax on my own. Give me a sun lounger, a pool and a sea view, and I'm happy. — Miranda Hart

Julie was downright giddy about the fully paid trip, and my promised shopping spree with the black Am Ex card that Omar gifted to me with the words, "Whatever makes you happy. There is no limit to this card, and there is no limit to what I would give you for the joy you've brought to my life." Needless to say, not only did I squeal, but when I told Julie, she fell off her chair. — Jessica Brooke

In this new year, may you have a deep understanding of your true value and worth, an absolute faith in your unlimited potential, peace of mind in the midst of uncertainty, the confidence to let go when you need to, acceptance to replace your resistance, gratitude to open your heart, the strength to meet your challenges, great love to replace your fear, forgiveness and compassion for those who offend you, clear sight to see your best and true path, hope to dispel obscurity, the conviction to make your dreams come true, meaningful and rewarding synchronicities, dear friends who truly know and love you, a childlike trust in the benevolence of the universe, the humility to remain teachable, the wisdom to fully embrace your life exactly as it is, the understanding that every soul has its own course to follow, the discernment to recognize your own unique inner voice of truth, and the courage to learn to be still. — Janet Rebhan

The most perfect day is the day on which you fully realise that everything is a miracle including yourself and feel so happy just because of this reason! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

If I can inspire one person to live their life fully, I will die a happy man — Steven Aitchison

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don't be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this - fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether yo u are living or dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

At the end of our time on earth, if we have lived fully, we will not be able to say, 'I was always happy.' Hopefully, we will be able to say, 'I have experienced a lifetime of real moments, and many of them were happy moments.' — Barbara De Angelis

If the world were always happy, there would be no such thing *as* happiness,' Thortan said.
'What do you mean?' Aliya asked.
'If we didn't know what sadness meant, we wouldn't fully understand joy, either,' Thortan said simply. — H.G. Warrender

You judge very properly," said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"
"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and thought I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible."
Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure. — Jane Austen

Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Some there are who resign themselves, but with certain reservation; they do not trust fully in God and therefore they try to provide for themselves. Others, again, at first offer all, but afterward are assailed by temptation and return to what they have renounced, thereby making no progress in virtue. These will not reach the true liberty of a pure heart nor the grace of happy friendship with Me unless they first make a full resignation and a daily sacrifice of themselves. Without this no fruitful union lasts nor will last. — Thomas A Kempis

When you have children, you realize how easy it is to not see them fully, and perhaps miss all those early years. If you are not careful, you can be too absorbed in work, and they will be only too happy to tell you about it later. Being a parent is one of greatest mindfulness practices of all. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-fainthearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming. — Carl R. Rogers

I, too, like to read. Once a month, I go to the local branch. For myself, I pick a novel and, for Bruno, with his cataracts, a book on tape. At first Bruno was doubtful. "What am I supposed to do with this?" he said, looking at the box set of "Anna Karenina" as if I'd handed him an enema. And yet. A day or two later I was going about my business when a voice from above bellowed, ALL HAPPY FAMILIES RESEMBLE ONE ANOTHER, nearly giving me a conniption. After that, he listened to whatever I'd brought him at top volume and then returned it to me without comment. One afternoon, I came back from the library with Ulysses. For a month straight he listened. He had a habit of pressing the stop button and rewinding when he hadn't fully grasped something. INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY. Pause. INELUCT. — Nicole Krauss

Although I have known sorrow and great sadness, as is everybody's lot, I don't think that I have had an unhappy hour as a philosopher since we returned to England. I have worked hard, and I have often got deep into insoluble difficulties. But I have been most happy in finding new problems, in wrestling with them, and in making some progress. This, or so I feel, is the best life. It seems to me infinitely better than the life of mere contemplation (to say nothing of divine self-contemplation) which Aristotle recommends as the best. It is a completely restless life, but it is highly self-contained/autark in Plato's sense, although no life, of course, can be fully autark. — Karl R. Popper

Not every day can be an easy one, nor every day fully happy; but even a day of tough going and difficulty can be a good day. — Norman Vincent Peale

The opposite of depression isn't feeling happy but being fully alive, however painful — Gwyneth Lewis

One's best work comes when we are fully alive, happy, and inspired. — Eric Schiffer

Until 'you' FULLY embrace who 'you are', no amount of money, no person or external things will EVER make you happy or bring you peace. — Yvonne Pierre

Life is about learning and growing. Experiencing. Self-expression. And overall, living love in all forms. Our soul's evolution is dependent upon embracing, and becoming, unconditional love. Acceptance is an important part of that if we wish to avoid resistance and human drama. At the end of the day, we all just want to feel good and be happy. And attaining that is all that matters because then, we can be the highest versions of ourselves. The ups and downs of life are what make it real for us. The ups and downs that we experience within ourselves are what make us real, and human. In order to fully live each and every day, we need to open to all of life and all of ourselves. Resistance puts a kink in that seamless plan and brings us more of what we do not want. — Camille Lucy

I never fully realized how much a New England birth in itself was worth, but I am happy that that was my lot. I have felt it so keenly these last few days. Dear old New England, with all her sternness and uncompromising opinions; the home of all that is good and noble. — Matthew Pearl

Explore fully the sacred-moment. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Becoming drunk is a journey that generally elates him in the early stages - he's good company, expansive, mischievous and fun, the famous old poet, almost as happy listening as talking. But once the destination is met, once established up there on that unsunny plateau, a fully qualified drunk, the nastier muses, the goblins of aggression, paranoia, self-pity take control. The expectation now is that an evening with John will go bad somehow, unless everyone around is prepared to toil at humouring and flattering and hours of frozen-faced listening. No one will be. — Ian McEwan

I have a beard,' Dr. Montague said, pleased, and looked around at them with a happy beam. 'My wife,' he told them, 'likes a man to wear a beard. Many women, on the other hand, find a beard distasteful. A clean-shaven man - you'll excuse me, my boy - never looks fully dressed, my wife tells me.' He held out his glass to Luke. — Shirley Jackson

Once scouting fully opens its doors to all who desire the same experience that so fully enriched me as a young person, I will be happy to reconsider a role on the advisory board. — Steven Spielberg

It is too often the quality of happiness that you feel at every moment its fragility, while depression seems when you are in it to be a state that will never pass. Even if you accept that moods change, that whatever you feel today will be different tomorrow, you cannot relax into happiness like you can into sadness. For me, sadness has always been and still is a more powerful feeling; and if that is not a universal experience, perhaps it is the base from which depression grows. I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul. When I am happy, I feel slightly distracted by happiness, as though it fails to use some part of my mind and brain that wants the exercise. Depression is something to do. My grasp tightens and becomes acute in moments of loss: I can see the beauty of glass objects fully at the moment when they slip from my hand toward the floor — Andrew Solomon

And, in keeping with the original Milesian Tales which had happy endings, I would conclude the episode of the lovely Atalanta Chan, who, having sold her virginity for one million dollars, ended up still a virgin.
This fact did not escape the astute mind of the financial wizard, Butes, who pointed out to the lovely girl that since her flower had already been fully paid for & since it was he who had arranged the deal, he should be the one to enjoy any benefit that remained.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

The path to true happiness is one of integrating and fully accepting all aspects of our experience. This integration is represented in the Taoist symbol of yin/yang, a circle which is half dark and half light. In the midst of the dark area is a spot of light, and in the midst of the light area is a spot of darkness. Even in the depths of darkness, the light is implicit. Even in the heart of light, the dark is understood, acknowledged, and absorbed. If things are not going well for us in life and we are suffering, we are not defeated by the pain or closed off to the light. If things are going well and we are happy, we are not defensively trying to deny the possibility of suffering. This unity, this integration, comes from deeply accepting darkness and light, and therefore being able to be in both simultaneously. — Sharon Salzberg

Once you are aware that you can live a happy, fully satisfied life without causing harm to animals, being a carnivore is a tough thing to justify. — Adam Sobel

A well-chosen tie could make me almost merry; a good book, an excursion in a motor car or an hour with a woman left me fully satisfied. It particularly pleased me to ensure that this way of life, like a faultlessly correct suit of English tailoring, did not make me conspicuous in any way. I believe I was considered pleasant company, I was popular and welcome in society, and most who knew me called me a happy man. — Stefan Zweig

When it comes right down to it, the challenge of mindfulness is to realize that "this is it" Right now is my life. The question is, What is my relationship to it going to be? Does my life just automatically "happen" to me? Am I a total prisoner of my circumstances or my obligations, of my body or my illness, or of my history? Do I become hostile or defensive or depressed if certain buttons get pushed, happy if other buttons are pushed, and frightened if something else happens? What are my choices? Do I have any options? We will be looking into these questions more deeply when we take up the subject of our reactions to stress and how our emotions affect our health. For now the important point is to grasp the value of bringing the practice of mindfulness into the conduct of our daily lives. Is there any waking moment of your life that would not be richer and more alive for you if you were more fully awake while it was happening? — Jon Kabat-Zinn