Happiness Achieved Quotes & Sayings

Can social progress be made without government?
It's like saying 'can happiness be achieved without the initiation of violence? Can romance be achieved without rape? Can profitability be achieved without theft? Can economic growth be achieved without the mass indebted enslavement and counterfeiting of the federal reserve?'. — Stefan Molyneux

You'll never meet a happy ungrateful person, or an unhappy grateful person because gratitude and happiness go together. Sometimes happiness precedes gratitude but often gratitude precedes happiness. The latter is achieved by realising things could be worse but aren't and so feeling relieved, grateful and happy. — Zig Ziglar

Happiness is a different thing altogether. If you try to achieve it, you have every chance of failing. And besides, how would you ever know that you'd achieved it? Of course one can't blame people, especially unhappy people, for wanting to be happier and setting themselves goals in order to try to escape from their unhappiness. — Francois Lelord

Happiness cannot be bought by money,
cannot be acquired by degrees,
cannot be realized by power,
and cannot be earned by honor;
but can be won by kindness,
gained by charity,
attained by goodness,
and achieved by love. — Matshona Dhliwayo

They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime, mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the color of sunset, of autumn: and only Karellen's ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms. — Arthur C. Clarke

Instead of admitting that happiness is an art of the indirect that is achieved or not through secondary goals, it is presented as if it were an immediately accessible objective, and recipes are provided. Whatever the method chosen, psychic, somatic, chemical, spiritual, or computer-based, the presupposition is everywhere the same: contentment is within your reach, all you have to do is undergo a "positive conditioning," an "ethical discipline" that will lead you to it. This amounts to an astonishing inversion of the will, which seeks to establish its protectorate over psychic states and feelings that are traditionally outside its jurisdiction. It wears itself our trying to change what does not depend on it (at the risk of not dealing with what can be changed). — Pascal Bruckner

If you see yourself in a favorable light, if your image of yourself is pleasant, if this visual concept of yourself cannot be shaken by temporary defeats, then you have reached the goal achieved by the most fortunate. Not everyone reaches this mental state; in fact, many people do not even believe it is possible. Happiness and peace of mind are a matter of consciousness. We must create the inner-harmony we desire. This type of awareness is not an accident, it comes from study and an understanding that we are truly creative. — Bob Proctor

But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. — Ayn Rand

I've pursued dreams and achieved them, but I don't think anybody should think their life is incomplete if they don't follow some dream. Happiness doesn't come from achievements, or money, or any sort of treasure. Happiness is a frame of mind, not a destination. It's appreciating what you've got and building relationships with those around you. — Janette Rallison

The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in. — Terry Pratchett

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed. — Dalai Lama XIV

Only by working within the laws that govern the flow of water will happiness be achieved. — Laozi

Sometimes I think it's easier to think about being happier, for what ever that means to you then worrying about what is happiness and what would life be if I finally achieved this ultimate happiness? — Gretchen Rubin

Through memory to knowledge on the way to stars that are stepping down to the stuffy rooms of modern bureaucrats, illuminating their ceilings, their horizons where everything is easily resolved by the piles of paper and recipes for how to live, create, run, eat, breathe, learn how to love, how to make love, how to sleep, how to dream, how happiness is achieved under the artificial stars of the new sky that emerged from the bureaucratic rooms of aspiring and impotent minds, unable to love, even though they had all their life to learn what they preach. — Dejan Stojanovic

eRemember though, that happiness can never be achieved through the expectations levied on another; such a notion is not doomed to fail - but is just doomed! Happiness can never be achieved through the distress or destruction that one imposes on the other person. When a child, now grown-up, does not resolve their deep-seeded anger with a parent or parents, the "other person" plays Hell trying to make-up for it. Married, divorced or dead, the 'other person' can never replace what was lost so much
earlier in the life and soul of the oppressed. Forgiveness must be the course for any future, substantive relationships. — H. Kirk Rainer

Thus Arthur achieved the adventure of the sword that day and entered into his birthright of royalty. Wherefore, may God grant His Grace unto you all that ye too may likewise succeed in your undertakings. For any man may be a king in that life in which he is placed if so he may draw forth the sword of success from out of the iron of circumstance. Wherefore when your time of assay cometh, I do hope it may be with you as it was with Arthur that day, and that ye too may achieve success with entire satisfaction unto yourself and to your great glory and perfect happiness. — Howard Pyle

True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed. — Dalai Lama

We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achieved something of the fullness of being for which we were destined in our creation. If we love everything else but God, we contradict the image born in our very essence, and we cannot help being unhappy, because we are living a caricature of what we are meant to be. — Thomas Merton

Happiness is a hard thing because it is achieved only by making others happy. — Stuart Cloete

It is a commonplace that happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good. In thought, at any rate, those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires. — Bertrand Russell

If someone offered the chance to be happy for the rest of your life, everyone in the room will bid, but what they don't know that the secret is nothing, they all have the power already with them.
One of the most bizarre quirks of human beings is that they have always craved for happiness and yet have always found it difficult to find the things that would really make them happy. The everlasting happiness cannot be achieved through other people or the materialistic things. — RKSJ

Everything humanity have achieved is achieved by dreams, desires, and actions. — Debasish Mridha

Happiness is found in the simplest of things. Happiness is found in gratitude, in a kept promise, in a good conversation, in love, in friendship, in an achieved goal, in a fond memory; in all the simple magnificence of life. — Steve Maraboli

We long for experiences "of profound connection with others," he writes, "of deep understanding of natural phenomena, of love, of being profoundly moved by music or tragedy, or doing something new and innovative." Just as important, we long for esteem and pride, "a self that happiness is a fitting response to." Implicit in Nozick's experiment is the idea that happiness should be a by-product, not a goal. Many of the ancient Greeks believed the same. To Aristotle, eudaimonia (roughly translated as "flourishing") meant doing something productive. Happiness could only be achieved through exploiting our strengths and our potential. To be happy, one must do, not just feel. — Jennifer Senior

I felt so full of gratitude and humility that I clasped my hands in front of me, closed my eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks to God ... I had at last achieved something I'd wanted for so long ... My insides bubbled with happiness. It was a dream come true. — Cathy Freeman

It is not so much what we get out of life as what we put into it that determines how large our returns of happiness shall be. The triumphant life is to be achieved through service. But it must be free and not compulsory ... There is a place where the path of duty suddenly becomes the path of beauty. — Frank C. Lockwood

Happiness should never be an option. it should always be the product of every endeavor, achieved or otherwise. — Jawe Querimit

Stop waiting for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you, for life, happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make the most of the moment you are in NOW. — Annomynous

Phineas didn't really dislike West Point in particular or authority in general, but just considered authority the necessary evil against which happiness was achieved by reaction, the backboard which returned all the insults he threw at it. — John Knowles

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness — Erich Fromm

Happiness, it has been observed, is best achieved by those who have been most unhappy heretofore. — Millard Kaufman

live moment by moment, looking for reasons to be grateful, trying to create her own happiness and grace, and to use them as a means to a good life in the present and not a goal to be achieved some other day. Anna's — Mark T. Sullivan

Happiness is achieved by flowing with the known and the unknown within you, being in a state of simplified simplicity. — P.A. Wunderlich

Happiness in simplicity can be achieved with a flexible mindset and nine hours sleep each night. — Dalai Lama

So How Much of a THING or THINGS is Enough? And if you have EVERYTHING, have you achieved perfect HAPPINESS? — Carew Papritz

Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good. — Valerie Solanas

True happiness isn't something that is achieved only once and continues; it is something we must strive for again and again. — Terry Lander

The problem isn't materialism as such. Rather it is the underlying assumption that full satisfaction can arise from gratifying the senses alone. Unlike animals whose quest for happiness is restricted to survival and to the immediate gratification of sensory desires, we human beings have the capacity to experience happiness at a deeper level which, when achieved, can overwhelm unhappy experiences. — Dalai Lama

I belong to the givers. I want to give a little happiness even if I haven't had much for myself. Music has enriched my life and, hopefully - through me, a little - the public's. If anyone left an opera house feeling more happy and at peace, I achieved my purpose. — Maria Callas

Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness ... The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy. — Ron Paul

What is God-given is called nature; to follow nature is called Tao (the Way); to cultivate the way is called culture. Before joy, anger, sadness and happiness are expressed, they are called the inner self; when they are expressed to the proper degree, they are called harmony. The inner self is the correct foundation of the world, and the harmony is the illustrious Way. When a man has achieved the inner self and harmony, the heaven and earth are orderly and the myriad of things are nourished and grow thereby. — Confucius

Against the suffering which may come upon one from human relationships the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation, keeping oneself aloof from other people. The happiness which can be achieved along this path is, as we see, the happiness of quietness. Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself. — Sigmund Freud

Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude. — John Chrysostom

Happiness is a state of mind, a choice, a way of living; it is not something to be achieved, it is something to be experienced. — Steve Maraboli

At that period I paid as constant attention to the greater securing of my happiness, to enjoying and judging it, too, as I had always done for the smallest details of my acts; and what is the act of love, itself, if not a moment of passionate attention on the part of the body? Every bliss achieved is a masterpiece; the slightest error turns it awry, and it alters with one touch of doubt; any heaviness detracts from its charm, the least stupidity renders it dull. My own felicity is in no way responsible for those of my imprudences which shattered it later on; in so far as I have acted in harmony with it I have been wise. I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The positive and negative states of being bring about action. They cause the loss of balance and of happiness. They cause the eternal revolutions - the changes that follow one upon the other. They explain why happiness cannot be achieved in time. — Piet Mondrian

Therapy when practiced well is a fine but delicately balanced intervention in another person's life. It requires a devotion to truth and a merciless pursuit of right living. Expertise in bringing people out of the darkness of a disappointed or bitter life into the light of a new vitality is hard earned. It is a privilege and a pleasure when it works well. But that level of engagement with clients is also extremely demanding and it can never be achieved by trotting out stereotyped tricks from approved textbooks. — Emmy Van Deurzen

People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end. — Herbert Spencer

And here lies the essential between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances. — Oliver Burkeman

Rosa had achieved the sort of serene and confident happiness that Tamsin had never really known. She was connected to Roberto in a way that made Tamsin long for something similar. A man with whom she could share all parts of her life, someone to be her equal and her inspiration. — Emily Arden

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy - a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions. — Ayn Rand

The habit of happiness is achieved through the attitude of gratitude. — Annette Zoheret

Happiness. I believed few people ever achieved it. — Ilsa Madden-Mills

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Have you achieved your goal today? Fantastic! Set a goal for tomorrow, next month, next year, and years from now. — Debasish Mridha

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. — Aldous Huxley

Everyone's goal is to be happy. Happiness is achieved by promoting happiness to others. — Russell Simmons

I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will eat away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. — Elizabeth Gilbert

If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved. — Maurice Chevalier

True wealth, success, and happiness can only be achieved by balancing our business life with the duty we have to our self and to our family. — Joseph C. Kunz Jr.

It is the pursuit of happiness that brings us happiness, and not the happiness achieved. — Jack White

Happiness isn't what happens when you whistle along, pretending bad things don't exist ... Happiness is earned, like everything else. It's achieved. — Marisa De Los Santos

Happiness can be achieved through training the mind. — Dalai Lama

Do not effort to win but try to lose if your Close one is there to fight
Happiness that is achieved after losing to our close one's ,that is not possible to achieved even after winning the world — Mohammed Zaki Ansari

Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it. — Sallust

To love, to be loved, and to be useful: these are the most important elements in a happy, meaningful life, and they can be achieved anywhere. — Syrie James

The ultimate destiny of the human race is the greatest moral perfection, provided that it is achieved through human freedom, whereby alone man is capable of the greatest happiness. — Immanuel Kant

There are some lucky people who feel they experience happiness when they gaze at a cloud or walk on the beach but the rest of us only get that special tingly buzz when we've bought, won, achieved, hooked or booked something. Then our own brains give us a hit of dopamine, which makes us feel good. We don't need substances; we are our own drug dealers. The — Ruby Wax

Was happiness (which was perhaps achieved not by getting what you wanted, but rather, by obtaining what you didn't know you wished for until it was in hand) a hologram that would continually change appearance with the slightest shift of perspective? Or maybe happiness by definition was a temporary state of being recognizable only in hindsight. It was impossible to catch what always managed to be overrun and end up in the rear view mirror. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Genuine happiness can only be achieved when we transform our way of life from the unthinking pursuit of pleasure to one committed to enriching our inner lives, when we focus on 'being more' rather than simply having more. — Daisaku Ikeda

True happiness cannot not be achieved through wealth, fame or action,
But through love, modesty and self satisfaction. — Mouloud Benzadi

Happiness is not the shallow state of feeling pleased and chipper all the time. Happiness is the state of a human being that has achieved cross-level coherence within herself, and between herself and the people, challenges, and institutions around her. Happiness comes from between. — Jonathan Haidt

Fifty-four years of love and tenderness and crossness and devotion and unswerving loyalty. Without her I could have achieved a quarter of what I have achieved, not only in terms of success and career, but in terms of personal happiness. — Noel Coward

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

In his life, after all, he had achieved nothing, had been totally unproductive. He couldn't make anyone else happy, and, of course, couldn't make himself happy. Happiness? He wasn't even sure what that meant. — Haruki Murakami

Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for your life to begin and start making the most of the moment you are in. — Germany Kent

Without union our independence and liberty would never have been achieved; without union they can never be maintained. Divided into twenty-four, or even a smaller number, of separate communities, we shall see our internal trade burdened with numberless restraints and exactions; communications between distant points and sections obstructed or cut off; our sons made soldiers to deluge with blood the fields they now till in peace ... The loss of liberty, of all good government, of peace, plenty, and happiness, must inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union. — Andrew Jackson

But it is not emancipation that the great majority seeks. When pressed, most men will admit that it takes but little to be happy. (Not that they practice this wisdom!) Man craves happiness here on earth, not fulfillment, not emancipation. Are they utterly deluded, then, in seeking happiness? No, happiness is desirable, but it is a by-product, the result of a way of life, not a goal which is forever beyond one's grasp. Happiness is achieved en route. And if it be ephemeral, as most men believe, it can also give way, not to anxiety of despair, but to a joyousness which is serene and lasting. To make happiness the goal is to kill it in advance. If one must have a goal, which is questionable, why not self-realization? The unique and healing quality in this attitude toward life is that in the process goal and seeker become one. — Henry Miller

A wish for the irrational is not to be achieved, whether the sacrificial victims are willing or not. But men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their longing to destroy
so long as self-destruction and self-sacrifice are preached to them as the practical means of achieving happiness of the recipients. — Ayn Rand

The golden rule of business is supply and demand. I venture to say that this is also the rule of happiness. When a balance is achieved between our desires and another's willingness to satisfy them, the result is a sympathetic, mutually rewarding relationship. ( ... ) a thriving economy of love.' - character Mike Lambeth — Caroline Adderson

Formerly irreconcilable enemies, morality and happiness have fused; today, it is being unhappy that is immoral; the superego has moved into the citadel of felicity and governs it with an iron hand. The end of culpability comes at the price of endless torment. Pleasure is no longer a promise but a problem. The idea of full satisfaction has replaced that of constraint, and it has in turn become a requirement that full satisfaction be achieved. Each of us is responsible for being in good shape, in a good mood, and no longer has to renounce anything; instead, we have to adapt to a process of improvement that rejects any resistance to change. Order has ceased to condemn us or deprive us; now it shows us, with maternal solicitude, how to fulfill ourselves. — Pascal Bruckner

I want to live the way I choose. It's all about happiness. I'm a happy person. But to find true happiness, peace within yourself and the world, that is something achieved in the moment. No matter the circumstance. — Brett Dennen

Happiness, as far as we are concerned, is achieved through living a meaningful life, a life that is filled with passion and freedom, a life in which we can grow as individuals and contribute to other people in meaningful ways. Growth and contribution: those are the bedrocks of happiness. Not stuff. This may not sound sexy or marketable or sellable, but it's the cold truth. Humans are happy if we are growing as individuals and if we are contributing beyond ourselves. Without growth, and without a deliberate effort to help others, we are just slaves to cultural expectations, ensnared by the trappings of money and power and status and perceived success. — Joshua Fields Millburn

The quality of life does not depend on happiness alone, but also on what one does to be happy. If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one's existence, if one does not use the mind to its fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess. A person who achieves contentment by withdrawing from the world to "cultivate his own garden," like Voltaire's Candide, cannot be said to lead an excellent life. Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Happiness is the offspring of concentrated action. Excellence is achieved through the progressive realization of incremental goals along the path of your life's mission. — Robin Sharma

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly. — Bertrand Russell

Absolutely everybody wants to be liked (law 1).

Everyone feels different inside (less confident, less able, etc.) from how they infer other people to feel (law 2).

Few honest and courageous people who have achieved anything of real value in life do not feel a fraud much of the time (law 3).

Acceptance of these three 'laws' alone would save an awful lot of people an awful lot of grief! — David Smail

I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions. — Benjamin Graham