Happiness Is Earned Quotes & Sayings

I believe that the great stretches of forests in northern Europe, with their constant seasonal changes, their restricted views, their astonish biological diversity, their secret gifts and perils and the knowledge that you have to go through them to get anywhere else, created the themes and ethics of the fairy tales we know best. There are secrets, hidden identities, cunning disguises; there are rhythms of change like the changes of the seasons; there are characters, both human and animal, whose assistance can be earned or spurned; and there is
over and over again
the journey or quest, which leads first to knowledge and then to happiness. The forest is the place of trial in fairy stories, both dangerous and exciting. Coming to terms with the forest, surviving its terrors, utilising its gifts and gaining its help is the way to 'happy ever after. — Sara Maitland

Happiness does not have to be deserved, earned, worked for or paid for; it simply has to be accepted. — Robert Holden

He's earned a lifetime of peace and happiness, but some people never get what they deserve. That's why there are saints in gutters and sadists in palaces. — Ann Aguirre

There is no happiness that isn't earned — Dennis Prager

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

[There is] a strange split in thinking common to those on the religious left, who are quick to denounce the profit motive and commercialism. Yet, they seem to think that the key to happiness is giving people more stuff - by enlisting the coercive power of government. This perverse way of thinking holds that 'social justice' demands that we take money from those who have earned it and give it to those who have less of it. That's not social justice; that's materialism. — Robert Sirico

Happiness earned, not given. — Toba Beta

You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words. — Elizabeth Gilbert

All life worth living is difficult, nobody promised us happiness; it is not a commodity you have earned, or shall ever earn. It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the season we hoped for, or as the result of our planning for it ... — Katherine Anne Porter

Nobody whom this war has touched will ever be happy again in quite the same way. But it will be a better happiness, I think, little sister - a happiness we've earned. — L.M. Montgomery

Life isn't about counting what you've earned or what you've done for others. I think life is in those in-between moments when you do something, and you feel really, truly happy just by doing it. — Snigdha Rai

Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched - just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance - so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned. — Albert Camus

I'm not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a fashionable position, or a great name for my girls. If rank and money come with love and virtue also, I should accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune; but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures. — Louisa May Alcott

Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Buy Experiences Not Goods. Want to buy happiness? Then spend your hard-earned cash on experiences. Go out for a meal. Go to a concert, cinema or theatre. Go on holiday. Go and learn how to pole dance. Go paintballing. Go bungee jumping. In fact, get involved in anything that provides an opportunity to do things with others, and then tell even more people about it afterwards. When it comes to happiness, remember that it is experiences that represent really good value for money. — Richard Wiseman

That is why I decline to recognize the mere
multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country;
and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his
wealth in a way that makes him a real benefit, of real use- and such is often the
case- why, then he does become an asset of real worth. — Theodore Roosevelt

First, we should concentrate each day on the happiness portfolio: faith, family, community, and earned success through work. Teach it to those around you, and fight against the barriers to these things. Second, resist the worldly formula of misery, which is to use people and love things. Instead, remember your core values and live by the true formula: Love people and use things. Third, celebrate the free enterprise system, which creates abundance for the most people - especially the poor. But always remember that the love of money is the root of all evil, and that the ideal life requires abundance without attachment. — Arthur C. Brooks

As long one is not able to let go of the insistence on a certain opinion [faith, sect], he has not earned the right for Moksha [Ultimate Liberation]. He is not worthy of Moksha if he is in the sect. He is only worthy of material happiness; he is worthy of a celestial life. — Dada Bhagwan

Poor the man who has earned millions and millions of rupees but has never tasted the meaning of true love. — Avijeet Das

Joy is a gift given not an emotion earned. — Todd Stocker

A successful life for a man or for a woman seems to me to lie in the knowledge that one has developed to the limit the capacities with which one was endowed; that one has contributed something constructive to family and friends and to a home community; that one has brought happiness wherever it was possible; that one has earned one's way in the world, has kept some friends, and need not be ashamed to face oneself honestly. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I wrote a line in a song once: "We are never broken." I believe that truly. It is a hard-earned belief, and rose out of many years of experiencing the opposite. I believe we forget who we are over time, and in our state of forgetfulness we struggle and employ all kinds of learned behaviors that don't necessarily help us or bring us happiness. Each of us has a self that exists undamaged and whole, from the moment we are born, waiting to be reclaimed. My life has not been about fixing what is broken. It has been about engaging in a loving and tender archaeological dig back to my true self. — Jewel

Happiness and health must be earned by absolute control of the emotional nature. — Florence Scovel Shinn

When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one. — Robert Louis Stevenson

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

In the end, it doesn't matter how much you earned, but how much you gave away with love. — Debasish Mridha

What, exactly, is the happiness that can be earned by turning away from reality? — Hiromu Arakawa

This place has struggles, triumphs, failures, and true joy, because happiness must be earned to be appreciated. This is a world that makes perfect sense. Justice reigns, and compassion is the most gracious virtue. This isn't the world that Lennon misguidedly envisioned in his beautiful song. His world was without consequences. On the surface, that might seem like the best solution, but if you follow the logic of it, his was an imagined world of pointless apathy. It was a world at peace, but remember, peace can only be valued in light of chaos. Without any defining commotion, without comparison, peace ceases to exist. Lennon dreamed of no greed or hunger. No wants or desires. In his imaginary world, there was nothing to live for or die for. There was nothing to fight for. Every one walked around with frontal lobotomies. — Marius Forte

It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison. — Ashley Montagu

This is very American, too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness. Planet Advertising in America orbits completely around the need to convince the uncertain consumer that yes, you have actually warranted a special treat. This Bud's for You! You Deserve a Break Today! Because You're Worth It! You've Come a Long Way, Baby! And the insecure consumer thinks, Yeah! Thanks! I AM gonna go buy a six-pack, damn it! Maybe even two six-packs! And then comes the reactionary binge. Followed by the remorse. Such advertising campaigns would probably not be as effective in the Italian culture, where people already know that they are entitled enjoyment in this life. The reply in Italy to "You Deserve a Break Today" would probably be, Yeah, no duh. That's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon, to go over to you house and sleep with your wife. — Elizabeth Gilbert

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 cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. — Denis Waitley

The historical figures who earned the honorific "So-and-So the Great" were not great artists, scholars, doctors, or inventors, people who enhanced human happiness or wisdom. They were dictators who conquered large swaths of territory and the people in them. If Hitler's luck had held out a bit longer, he probably would have gone down in history as Adolf the Great. — Steven Pinker

I believed that one person owes a duty to another with no payment for it in return. I believed that it was my duty to love a woman who gave me nothing, who betrayed everything I lived for, who demanded her happiness at the price of mine. I believed that love is some static gift which, once granted, need no longer be deserved - just as they believe that wealth is a static possession which can be seized and held without further effort. I believed that love is a gratuity, not a reward to be earned just as they believe it is their right to demand an unearned wealth. And just as they believe that their need is a claim on my energy, so I believed that her unhappiness was a claim on my life. For the sake of pity, not justice, I — Ayn Rand

The truth is that relative income is not directly related to happiness. Nonpartisan social-survey data clearly show that the big driver of happiness is earned success: a person's belief that he has created value in his life or the life of others. — Arthur C. Brooks

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