Happy Travel Quotes & Sayings

I tell ya! The road to success is an endless battle for you and me. — Steven Jackson

I made my first home there and had been happy, because to be alienated in one's own country, in one's own hometown, among one's kin and peers, was problematic, but nothing could be more natural than to be alienated in a foreign country, and so there I had at last naturalized my estrangement. This may be one of the underappreciated pleasures of travel: of being at last legitimately lost and confused. — Rebecca Solnit

No such thing as time travel, he'd rumbled patiently, once. Only live with what you've done, and try in the future to do what you're happy to live with. — Richard K. Morgan

Tourism is the great soporific. It's a huge confidence trick, and gives people the dangerous idea that there's something interesting in their lives. It's musical chairs in reverse ... All the upgrades in existence lead to the same airports and resort hotels, the same pina colada bullshit. The tourists smile at their tans and their shiny teeth and think they're happy. But the suntans hide who they really are
salary slaves, with heads full of American rubbish. Travel is the last fantasy the 2oth Century left us, the delusion that going somewhere helps you reinvent yourself. — J.G. Ballard

An ardent desire to go took possession of me once more. Not because I wanted to leave - I was quite all right on this Cretan coast, and felt happy and free there and I needed nothing - but because I have always been consumed with one desire; to touch and see as much as possible of the earth and the sea before I die. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Magic carpet rides, rune magic, Ali Baba and visions of the Holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of red wine. Buddha. Frodo's journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resur-rection and the Life at the turn of a card ... I've believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to. Or pretended not to.
And now? What do I believe right now?
'I believe that being happy is the only important thing,' I told him at last.
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the hear. Bitter. Sweet. Alive. — Joanne Harris

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life ... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion
joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things. — Barbara Kingsolver

We might laugh at the notion of plastic tea sets in the jungle, but it is a time-honored ritual for Western travelers to collect preindustrial artifacts to use as home decorations...Possession of primitive artifacts suggests worldly knowledge, just as in the highland communities of Borneo an electronic wristwatch that plays "Happy Birthday" is the mark of a great traveler. Funny thing how travel can narrow the mind. — Eric Hansen

Although I understand that all days are equal with 24 hours each, most of us agree that Friday is the longest day of the week and Sunday the shortest! — D.S. Mixell

How, I wonder, staring out my hotel window into black nothingness, can Icelanders possibly be happy living under this veil of darkness? I've always associated happy places with palm trees and beaches and blue drinks and, of course, swim-up bars. That's paradise, right? The global travel industry certainly wants us to think so. Bliss, the ads tell us, lies someplace else, and that someplace else is sunny and eighty degrees. Always. Our language, too, reflects the palm-tree bias. Happy people have a sunny disposition and always look on the bright side of life. Unhappy people possess dark souls and black bile. — Eric Weiner

The wife of a junior officer cooped up in a horrible canvas partition in steerage for five months wrote:
"I had enjoyed much peace there in the absence of every comfort, even of such as are now enjoyed in jail. I used to say that there were four privations in my situation - fire, water, earth and air. No fire to warm oneself on the coldest day, no water to drink but what was tainted, no earth to set the foot on, and scarcely any air to breathe. Yet, with all these miserable circumstances, we spent many a happy hour by candlelight in that wretched cabin whilst I sewed and he read the Bible to me. — Stephen Taylor

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there. — Elizabeth Bowen

He who would travel happy must travel lite. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I'm a big believer in winging it. I'm a big believer that you're never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I'm always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary. — Anthony Bourdain

I don't think I'd be happy if I were satisfied. I enjoy challenge, and I wouldn't say that I'm an ambitious person career-wise or financially, really. I would like to travel more comfortably, but that's really about all I need. — Jason Isbell

You couldn't get me to go travel around and sit in a hotel room again. I have no interest in doing that. So everybody's happy. I am, at 74. Some people like doing it, but I never was much for that, anyway. It's a lot of work. So the only thing I miss about all of it is the camaraderie of the tour, but that doesn't offset the rest of it. — Phil Everly

It was during my enchanted days of travel that the idea came to me, which, through the years, has come into my thoughts again and again and always happily - the idea that geology is the music of the earth. — Hans Cloos

Correlation does not equal causality. When two things travel together, it is tempting to assume that one causes the other. Married people, for instance, are demonstrably happier than single people; does this mean that marriage causes happiness? Not necessarily. The data suggest that happy people are more likely to get married in the first place. As one researcher memorably put it, If you're grumpy, who the hell wants to marry you? — Anonymous

We cannot escape the longing, no matter what life we choose. We're either longing for people, places or times gone by, which are essentially the same things: memories. And, whether or not we travel, the older we get, the more memories we collect. Nostalgia is simply the result of aging and liking the life you've lived. Be happy you can feel it - it's a good sign. — Anthony Marais

Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy. — Thomas Jefferson

Everybody says they want to be happy, but very few people know what will really make them happy. Some people say they want money, but money is just printed paper. Some say they want to travel, but you can only travel so much and then you have to come home." He — Willee Amsden

You see, she was gonna be an actress and I was gonna learn to fly. She took off to find the footlights, and I took off for the sky. And here, she's acting happy, inside her handsome home. And me, I'm flying in my taxi, taking tips, and getting stoned. I go flying so high, when I'm stoned. — Harry Chapin

If your heart is your home, you can be happy anywhere. — Lailah Gifty Akita

On this thanksgiving, I would like to thank that one girl, who never lost hope despite all odds were against her, who always worked, and moved on, despite losing all friends just after leaving school, a time when you need friends the most! Who had immense strength and will-power and so much inspiration inside her that she ended up being happy, satisfied, and successful, all alone.
That one girl who always smiles in the mirror, and says, 'Bitch, you have a long way to go, and you gotta travel all alone, depending upon anyone will make you weak, so buck up, there's a lot you gotta do!' On this thanksgiving, I thank myself, my soul for being so majestically robust!
I would have thanked other people, but sadly, nobody ever helped me, more than I helped myself ... — Mehek Bassi

I've three children, three grandchildren, I work, I travel, and I'm very happily married. I'm very satisfied and happy with my life and there really isn't anything I want. — Joan Collins

Reading was my only escape from reality. Through books, I could be whoever I wanted. I could fall in love with the handsome prince, travel to exotic places, and take the leap that almost always had a happy ending. — Teresa Mummert

Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life. — Paul Theroux

I was myself drawn along a path that was just as hypothetical, but it had become a matter of indifference to me whether or not I reached my destination: basically, what I wanted to do was to continue to travel with Fox across the prairies and mountains, to experience the awakenings, the baths in a freezing river, the minutes spent drying in the sun, the evenings spent around the fire in the starlight. I had attained innocence, in an absolute and nonconflictual state, I no longer had any plan, nor any objective, and my individuality dissolved into an indefinite series of days; I was happy. — Michel Houellebecq

You don't need to travel far to make people happy. When you make people nearer to you happy, people farther away from you will surely come. Keep doing it! — Israelmore Ayivor

There is no replay of yesterday. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I wish to go with you, not as man and wife, but merely as friends, travel companions, the sort of happy-go-lucky chums about whom rollicking old ballads of the road are written. — Alex Flinn

I'm happy because I won't have to train again, or travel or sit in team hotels. — Romario

Life was meant to be warm and happy and lovely. Life was meant to be a sweet unhampered thing, joyful and gay. It should have everything in it,--wealth and travel and happiness and a career and friends and Allen. And if it couldn't have them all . . . oh, it ought to have Allen. It ought, anyway, to have Allen.... It had been as though in that one brief bitter-sweet moment, she had been swept again into some haven, had become the center of some great plan. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Man's primary purpose is not to be happy but to continue to live, to continue to travel - happily or unhappily - on the path of life! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless, newborn baby
I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to
I just don't care. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable. — Jeanette Winterson

Be Happy and Positive all will come Good in Time. — Jan Jansen

Would he be happy? Joan hoped so. But somehow he seemed a man fated always to yearn after that which he could not have, to choose for himself the rockiest, most difficult path. She would pray for him, as for all the other sad and troubled souls who must travel roads alone. — Donna Woolfolk Cross

It is easier to bear the worries of wandering than to find peace in your hometown, where only the sage can live in a happy house surrounded by trite troubles and daily distractions. — Hermann Hesse

Joy is not the same as pleasure or happiness. A wicked and evil man may have pleasure, while any ordinary mortal is capable of being happy. Pleasure generally comes from things, and always through the senses; happiness comes from humans through fellowship. Joy comes from loving God and neighbor. Pleasure is quick and violent, like a flash of lightning. Joy is steady and abiding, like a fixed star. Pleasure depends on external circumstances, such as money, food, travel, etc. Joy is independent of them, for it comes from a good conscience and love of God. — Fulton J. Sheen

I have two moods when I get drunk. The common mood is the lazy, happy-go-lucky guy. The uncommon mood is the frustrated, self-deprecating guy. That night was the latter. — S.A. Tawks

Such a funny thing, time. You spend your whole life wishing there was more or less of it, never realizing that the time already given could be worth more than that which you wished for." -Davina — Moryah DeMott

What do your parents do? Do they travel a lot?"
My brow wrinkled. "No, they don't." I was tired of the interrogation. "Do yours?"
He blinked. "What?"
"Do your parents travel a lot? Are they still married? How many in your family? How old are you? What classes do you have? Boxers or briefs? What's your GPA? Do you always go around knocking strange girls off their feet and then hammering them with a barrage of personal questions?" I finished with a cocky smile.
Tristan hid a grin behind his fist. Mr. Exotic levelled me a steady stare, a sly smile gaining momentum. "Do you always end up straddling the guys that do?"
Tristan choked. My smile froze. Crap.
"And as for boxers or briefs." One hand went to his belt buckle. "I'd be happy to ... "
Double crap. I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder towards my house "I've gotta go. — A&E Kirk

I'm happy that the sacrificing, the hard training, the travel, the time being away from the family, is going to stop. So I'm happy; I'm glad about that. But I'm also terrified. Frightened. Because, I mean, in my whole adult life, cycling was the most consistent thing I ever did. — Jens Voigt

I loved working on 'Happy Gilmore' because I love to travel to new places and we got to go to British Columbia. Any Adam Sandler film is fun to work on because it is a reunion of the boys club of guys that have worked together in the past. — Kevin Nealon

The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific — James A. Michener

Those who travel with God feel free; they feel that they have nothing to fear, that they are not subject to control, but on the contrary that everything is subject to them because everything works together for their good, whether favorable or unfavorable circumstances, good or bad. They feel that everything belongs to them because they are God's children; that nothing can limit them, because God belongs to them. They are not subject to conditions but always do what they want because what they want is to love, and that is always within their power. Nothing can separate them from the God they love; and they feel that even if they were in prison, they would be just as happy, because there is no way that any power in the world could take God away from them. — Jacques Philippe

I Won't Fly Today

Too much to do, despite the snow,

which made all local schools close

their doors. What a winter! Usually,

I love watching the white stuff fall.

But after a month with only short

respites, I keep hoping for a critical

blue sky. Instead, amazing waves

of silvery clouds sweep over the crest

of the Sierra, open their obese

bellies, and release foot upon foot

of crisp new powder. The ski

resorts would be happy, except

the roads are so hard to travel

that people are staying home.

So it kind of boggles the mind

that three guys are laying carpet

in the living room. Just goes to

show the power of money. In less

than an hour, the stain Conner left

on the hardwood will be a ghost. — Ellen Hopkins

Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy. — Richard Francis Burton

Sanary says that you have to travel south by water to find answers to your dreams. He says too that you find yourself again there, but only if you get lost on the way - completely lost. Through love. Through longing. Through fear. Down south they listen to the sea in order to understand that laughing and crying sound the same, and that the soul sometimes needs to cry to be happy. — Nina George

And whether rich or poor, well or ill, happy or sad, books can be a refuge, they do not change with changing circumstance, they are the open highway to yesterday, today and tomorrow wherever you will to travel. — Gladys Taber

He felt as though he were failing in practically every area of his life. Lately, happiness seemed as distant and unattainable to him as space travel. He hadn't always felt this way. There had been a long period of time during which he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes are made, regrets form, and all that was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious. — Nicholas Sparks

Traveling is the great true love of my life ... I am loyal and constant in my love of travel. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. — Elizabeth Gilbert

They change their sky, not their mind, who cross the sea. A busy idleness possesses us: we seek a happy life, with ships and carriages: the object of our search is present with us. — Horace

There is something special about a quiet untouched forest that just pulls you into the moment. Something that no parks will ever be able to achieve. Isn't that what we're all searching for in life? To just be happy and content in the moment, to just be there in the "now"? — Jon Krakauer

As I get older, the things that I want are starting to make more sense. Being able to travel makes me happy, and I am a person that lives in the moment. I also want to live a good life. Traveling makes everyday issues seem so much smaller and really changes my perspective on things. — Jacqueline MacInnes Wood

There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House. — Herman Melville

It's hard to be less than happy when you can be happy with less. — Chris Brady

What a sacred journey? — Lailah Gifty Akita

Travel plucks us out of the worn routines of our lives and plops us down into a new culture, language, or city, and lets us figure life out. It strips the excess away and melts us down to our core. It teaches us that stuff doesn't make us happy - only experiences and being present do that. — Fred Perrotta

If you have been living your life saying to yourself, "I will be happy when I have a better house," "I will be happy when I get a job or promotion," "I will be happy when the kids are through college," "I will be happy when we have more money," "I will be happy when I can travel," or "I will be happy when my business is a success," you will never have those things because your thoughts are defying the way love works. They're defying the law of attraction. You have to be happy first, and give happiness, to receive happy things! It can't happen any other way, because whatever you want to receive in life, you must give first! You are in command of your feelings, you are in command of your love, and the force of love will give back to you whatever you give out. — Rhonda Byrne

Once upon a time, Aristophanes relates, there were gods in the heavens and humans down on earth. But we humans did not look the way we look today. Instead, we each had two heads and four legs and four arms - a perfect melding, in other words, of two people joined together, seamlessly united into one being. We came in three different possible gender or sexual variations: male/female meldings, male/male meldings, and female/female meldings, depending on what suited each creature the best. Since we each had the perfect partner sewn into the very fabric of our being, we were all happy. Thus, all of us double-headed, eight-limbed, perfectly contented creatures moved across the earth much the same way that the planets travel through the heavens - dreamily, orderly, smoothly. We lacked for nothing; we had no unmet needs; we wanted nobody. — Elizabeth Gilbert

[It is hard to know what is good luck and what isn't and therefore whether we should be happy or sad about it. Only time will tell. For example ... ] The Talmud relates a story about two people who wanted to travel by boat. One broke his foot and was unable to make the trip, while his friend got on the boat. The one who missed the boat cursed his misfortune. A few days later, however, he heard that the boat sank and all the passengers drowned. — Zelig Pliskin

I love to travel. I think it's the best education to experience how other people live. It reminds us of the abundance and variety we have in the world, but at our essence, we are all the same, we all want the same things: to live well, pursue our dreams, and be happy. — Kandyse McClure

I take a step toward him. My arm reaches up. I don't know if I'm reaching for the pipe or for him. I want to touch his skin. I want to breathe in what he breathes. The yellow swirl. I want to be the yellow swirl. I want him to breathe me in, be sent riding on oxygen molecules deep into his lungs. I want to travel through his body, seeing what makes him happy. Attaching myself to whatever place in him sparks to life on my arrival. His blood, his tissues, his muscles, I want to burrow inside the folds like a windblown dusting of snow, so that each time I melt away he seeks me out again. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Then I was lucky I met with my future husband, and I started new life with my husband, and I was happy again. He was a musician. I start to travel with him through Europe also and around the former Soviet Union. — Olga Korbut

I wouldn't call it a faux pas, but I have about 12 tracksuits. I always travel in a tracksuit. I feel it makes people happy when they see me. — Jenny Lewis

Sometimes I forget this insoluble mess and dream: he'll save me, we'll travel; we'll hunt in the deserts, we'll sleep on the pavements of strange cities, carelessly, without his guilt, without my pain. Or else I'm going to wake up and all the human laws and customs of this world will have changed - thanks to some magical power - or this world, without changing, will let me feel desire and be happy and carefree.
What did I want from him who hurt me more than I thought it was possible for two people to hurt each other? I wanted the adventures found in kids' books. He couldn't give me these because he wasn't able to. Whatever did he want from me? I never understood. He told me he was just average: average regrets, average hopes. What do I care about all that average shit that has nothing to do with adventure? — Kathy Acker

Well, to find that out, we need to go to the beginning." "You mean like, biblical Genesis? Because I have three rules for a happy, fulfilling life, and 'Never Time Travel Ever' is one of them. Because, you know. Dinosaurs killed things. And the bubonic plague killed things. And let's face it - with my supreme amounts of unnatural charm, I'd be burned as a witch." She — Sara Wolf

I am originally from Florida. So Thanksgiving was always something I really looked forward to, because I got to travel back home every year and see everyone all at once, around one big happy table. — Troy Gentile

Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy. — Shin Kyung-sook

The more I travel around the world, the more I see people want the same thing - to be happy. We wouldn't be in a monetary system if we didn't have to work, so if my music can contribute to happiness, then that's my main responsibility. — Jason Mraz

This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made. When we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us, we will see wonderful sights, hear wonderful sounds, meet wonderful people ... and be happy to return home. — Henri Nouwen

I travel so much when I work, I've really been happy to do 'Nice Work' because I feel like a true New Yorker again. I have my little regimen during the day, and I can take advantage of the museums and the things that I love. And people watching! — Blythe Danner

Sometimes maybe you should let someone you love travel great distances away from you. You shouldn't think you needed to set out to retrieve them and put them back where they belonged. Sometimes they were only safe and happy, like Annabelle Aurora. And then other times, it was just possible they were lost at sea. It would be your duty, then, to get out into the boat and search, even if the waves were choppy and the wind was howling the protests of the dead. — Deb Caletti

Had his room been facing west he would have noted the sparkling twenty-five-mile vista to the sea which looks almost like the Mediterranean. He would have noted how the streets of L.A. undulate over short hills as though a finger is poking the landscape from underneath. How laid over this crosshatch are streets meandering on the diagonal creating a multitude of ways to get from one place to another by traveling along the hypotenuse. These are the avenues of the tryst which enable Acting Student A to travel the eighteen miles across town to Acting Student B's garage apartment in nine minutes flat after a hot-blooded phone call at midnight. Had he been facing seaward on a balcony overlooking the city the writer might have heard drifting out of a tiny apartment window the optimistic voice of a shower singer imbued with the conviction that this is a place where it is possible to be happy. — Steve Martin

When I opened the curtains in the morning I saw the intersection of two six-lane highways. It was a comfortable, well equipped, practical sort of place, as Holidays Inns tend to be. You can be happy at a place like this so long as you stay away from the coffee. And the restaurant, if you want to be sure. Perhaps not happy, but not unhappy. Or if unhappy, at least not threatened. A good motel creates a kind of stasis for the soul in transit. One should leave no worse than one arrived: that is the minimum requirement. — Don Watson

Wherever I am, if I've got a book with me, I have a place I can go and be happy.
[Harry Potter Beyond the Page: A Virtual Author Visit with J.K. Rowling (Scholastic / Stacks webcast, October 11, 2012)] — J.K. Rowling

The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy.
She is the bird that evades every net: the wild deer that leaps every pitfall.
Like the mother bird to its chickens or a shield to the armed knight: so is the Lord to her mind, in His unchanging lucidity.
Bogies will not scare her in the dark: bullets will not frighten her in the day.
Falsehoods tricked out as truths assail her in vain: she sees through the lie as if it were glass.
The invisible germ will not harm her: nor yet the glittering sunstroke.
A thousand fail to solve the problem, ten thousand choose the wrong turning: but she passes safely through.
He details immortal gods to attend her: upon every road where she must travel.
They take her hand at hard places: she will not stub her toes in the dark.
She may walk among lions and rattlesnakes: among dinosaurs and nurseries of lionettes.
He fills her brim full with immensity of life: he leads her to see the world's desire. — C.S. Lewis

I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot - maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean. — Philip Glass

You would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality, which it never can remove; and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in a humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. — Edmund Burke

She alone is the happy woman who has learned to extract happiness, not from ideal conditions, but from the actual ones about her. The woman who has mastered the secret will not wait for ideal surroundings; she will not wait until next year, next decade, until she gets rich, until she can travel abroad ... but she will make the most out of life today, where she is. Paradise is here or nowhere. You must take your joy with you or you will never find it. — Orison Swett Marden

...To see your life flow in obscurity among the treasures of the heart and of nature, happy in your anonymity, and to occasionally lose yourself in reading or in the pleasure of being a sensitive admirer of the fine arts; that's the image of modern life you're looking for! — Paul Amadeus Dienach

She's happy to be home but being home means that it's an end to her adventure and escape. — S.A. Tawks

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel
before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away. — Zadie Smith

It's an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after,you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you've been and whats happened. In the end, you're just happy you were there- with your eyes open- and lived to see it. — Anthony Bourdain

To say "we're happy" might not be entirely true. Everyone is happy apart from me, as I travel to work wondering what's wrong. — Paulo Coelho

When I think of myself at 15, even 17, I could simply not have done this work on an international level and travel all the time, take care of myself and not feel lost. I feel very happy that this is happening now, and not 10 years ago, as I feel stronger as a person. — Saskia De Brauw

I am truly happy that I am able to travel from time to time to the USSR the country I love above all. I always have been, I am now and will always be a loyal friend of the Soviet Union. — Paul Robeson