Limited Happiness Quotes & Sayings

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people. — Karl Marx

You're only limited by your thoughts. You're limitless, boundless, endless and edgeless. — Debasish Mridha

Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature. — John Ralston Saul

Helping others is not limited to providing food, shelter, and so forth, but includes relieving the basic causes of suffering and providing the basic causes of happiness. — Dalai Lama

We choose ignorance because we can. We choose awareness because we can. Samsara and nirvana are simply different points of view based on the choices we make in how to examine and understand our experience. There's nothing magical about nirvana and nothing bad or wrong about samsara. If you're determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so, and that the opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available. — Yongey Mingyur

We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government. — Charles A. Murray

The face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying. — Rohinton Mistry

Live Today! Do not allow your spirit to be softened of your happiness to be limited by a day you cannot have back or a day that does not yet exist. — Steve Maraboli

Life has no limits. We are limited by our expectations. — Debasish Mridha

We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory. — Matthieu Ricard

When our happiness is dependent on what happens to us and when our self-focus determines our daily mood, our joy will necessarily be limited to whatever good thing happens to us. But when we learn to truly delight in the welfare of others and rejoice in what God is doing in their lives, the potential for increased joy skyrockets. — Gary L. Thomas

We bring a deeper commitment to our happiness when we fully understand, that our time left is limited and we really need to make it count. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Plan your life, keeping value of time in mind because time is your life and it is very limited. — Debasish Mridha

Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be commited to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness to
happen.
You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of "I", to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being. — Swami Dhyan Giten

The Bible is not a book of magic. It's a book of mystery. You can't just quote verses that support your prejudices or guarantee your health, wealth, and happiness and demand that God 'follow through' as promised. God is not limited to the words of Scripture. God is still speaking. — Mel White

The greatest miracle is to be alive. We can put an end to our suffering just by realizing that our suffering is not worth suffering for! How many people kill themselves because of rage or despair? In that moment, they do not see the vast happiness that is available. Mindfulness puts an end to such a limited perspective. The Buddha faced his own suffering directly and discovered the path of liberation. Don't run away from things that are unpleasant in order to embrace things that are pleasant. Put your hands in the earth. Face the difficulties and grow new happiness. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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

The girl's parents had belonged to a religious organization called the Society of Witnesses. A Christian sect, the Witnesses preached the coming of the end of the world. They were fervent proselytizers and lived their lives by the Bible. They would not condone the transfusion of blood, for example. This greatly limited their chances of surviving serious injury in a traffic accident. Undergoing major surgery was virtually impossible for them. On the other hand, when the end of the world came, they could survive as God's chosen people and live a thousand years in a world of ultimate happiness. — Haruki Murakami

Happiness is not limited. There's enough for everyone. — Susane Colasanti

You had to take life as it came. It gave no quarter, spared no feelings. Limited no pain. Put no ceiling on happiness. — David Baldacci

To practice tantra requires even greater compassion and greater intelligence than are required on the sutra path; thus, though many persons in the degenerate era are interested in tantra, tantra is not for degenerate persons. Tantra is limited to persons whose compassion is so great that they cannot bear to spend unnecessary time in attaining Buddhahood, as they want to be a supreme source of help and happiness for others quickly. — Dalai Lama XIV

You'd rather be here than in Africa. The trump card all narrow-minded nativists play. If you put a cupcake to my head, of course, I'd rather be here than any place in Africa, though I hear Johannesburg ain't that bad and the surf on the Cape Verdean beaches is incredible. However, I'm not so selfish as to believe that my relative happiness, including, but not limited to, twenty-four-hour access to chili burgers, Blu-ray, and Aeron office chairs is worth generations of suffering. I seriously doubt that some slave ship ancestor, in those idle moments between being raped and beaten, was standing knee-deep in their own feces rationalizing that, in the end, the generations of murder, unbearable pain and suffering, mental anguish, and rampant disease will all be worth it because someday my great-great-great-great-grandson will have Wi-Fi, no matter how slow and intermittent the signal is. — Paul Beatty

Close to one person or another, but from the conviction that other people are just like me and want not to suffer but to be happy, and from a commitment to help them overcome what causes them to suffer. I must realize that I can help them suffer less. That is true, well thought-out compassion. This attitude is not limited to the circle of our relatives and friends. It must extend to our enemies too. True compassion is impartial and bears with it a feeling of responsibility for the welfare and happiness of others. — Dalai Lama XIV

Meditation is the short path to happiness. Meditation takes you beyond the desire-aversion operating system that offers very limited happiness and a great deal of frustration. — Frederick Lenz

You know, Maneck, the human face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying."
"What a nice saying," he answered bitterly.
"Right now, Dinabai's face, and Om's, and mine are all occupied. Worrying about work and money, and where to sleep tonight. But that does not mean we are not sad. It may not show on the face, but it's sitting inside here." He placed his hand over his heart. "In here, there is limitless room- happiness, kindness, sorrow, anger, friendship- everything fits in here. — Rohinton Mistry

The act of willingly subtracting from one's own limited store of the good and the agreeable for the sake of adding to that of others reflects the understanding that individual happiness needs a base broader than the mere satisfaction of selfish passions. From there, it is not such a large step to the realization that respecting the susceptibilities and rights of others is as important as defending one's own susceptibilities and rights if civilized society is to be safeguarded. — Aung San Suu Kyi

WHY has no value, if you cannot rethink resourcefulness in a limited context. — Tony Dovale

One thing seemed to suggest that I might have some wisp of beauty to offer the world: the nature of my heart, which remained free of bitterness and anger. I feared, but I did not hate. I knew dread, but I did not judge. I loved and wished to be loved in return. And though my life had been circumscribed, though my experience had been limited by the threats I faced, I was usually happy. In this world, where woe and misery were common, where sometimes darkness seemed about to drown civilization, perhaps a capacity for happiness and hope was beauty of a kind, a small welcome light in the flood. — Dean Koontz

The pleasures of the damned
are limited to brief moments
of happiness:
like eyes in the look of a dog,
like a square of wax,
like a fire taking city hall,
the county,
the continent,
like fire taking the hair
of maidens and monsters;
and hawks buzzing in peach trees,
the sea running between their claws,
Time
drunk and damp,
everything burning,
everything wet,
everything fine. — Charles Bukowski

Still, happiness will depend on conditions favoring it. Lose those conditions and you lose your happiness. So, if your ability to affect happiness is so limited, the question becomes this - is happiness, then, really worthy of being the ultimate goal of life?" I'd — Bikram Dhillon

So many people are struggling to create happiness while their brain is inundated by noise. If your brain is receiving too much information, it automatically thinks you're under threat and scans the world for the negative first. Because the brain is limited, whatever you attend to first becomes your reality. — Shawn Achor

The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society's most grief-stricken arrangements, which has been rendered unnecessarily hellish by the astonishing secular supposition that it should be entered into principally for the sake of happiness. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and more modestly, as a mechanism by which individuals can assume an adult position in society and thence, with the help of a close friend, undertake to nurture and educate the next generation under divine guidance. These limited expectations tend to forestall the suspicion, so familiar to secular partners, that there might have been more intense, angelic or less fraught alternatives available elsewhere. Within the religious ideal, friction, disputes and boredom are signs not of error, but of life proceeding according to plan. — Alain De Botton

Rise above the limited conditions of pleasure and pain, success and failure, happiness and sorrow, that all the countless unenlightened beings in creation are slaves to. — Frederick Lenz

Described in this way, utilitarianism has little in common with the prosaic, visionless notion of the 'merely utilitarian,' in the sense of a narrowly or mundanely functional or efficient option. No such limited horizon confined the thought and character of the great English-language utilitarian philosophers, whose influence ran its course from the period just before the French Revolution through the Victorian era. Happiness, for them, was more of a cosmic calling, the path to world progress, and whatever was deemed 'utilitarian' had to be useful for that larger and inspiring end, the global minimization of pointless suffering and the global maximization of positive well-being or happiness. It invokes, ultimately, the point of view of universal benevolence. And it is more accurately charged with being too demanding ethically than with being too accommodating of narrow practicality, material interests, self-interestedness, and the like. — Bart Schultz

I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the principal source of success in life. Since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. The key is to develop inner peace. — Dalai Lama XIV

As I've gotten older and seen people around me evolving and moving on with life, I just have a stronger sense of my own mortality and time itself becomes more precious. I don't want to spend this precious and limited time on things that don't necessarily bring me happiness. — Justin Long

It's tempting to tether ourselves to the familiar comfort of the way things are, but fulfillment is often discovered in the unpredictable and unknown. We can serve ourselves and our universe, best, when we can take the journey that takes us from the limited desire of our ego, to the ever-expanding love and wisdom, of our divine nature. — Jaeda DeWalt

In some ways our greatest ally in this practice of love is our wish to be happy. This wish functions as a homing instinct for freedom when we can unite it with understanding what actually brings us happiness. But sometimes we may feel that we do not really deserve happiness; we may feel almost ashamed of wanting it. Yet this wish is one of the finest things about us, opening the door to transcending our limited lives. — Sharon Salzberg

Your life is limited only by your dreams. — Debasish Mridha

Everything exists in limited quantity - especially happiness. — Pablo Picasso

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness. — Sonia Sotomayor

I wanted to show how humans can have ugly feelings that they might prefer not to acknowledge; how we're all caught up in our own problems and limited by our own life experience," she says. "To judge somebody else, to declare them substandard, to conclude that their misfortunes are due to inherent character flaws, can be a way of boosting our own self-esteem, because it must follow that our comparative success or happiness is not mere luck or chance, but the reward for superior morals or talent. — J.K. Rowling

Our knowledge is limited but power of imagination is unlimited. — Debasish Mridha

Sometimes the principal emotion of the person arrested is relief and even happiness! This is another aspect of human nature. It happened before the Revolution too: the Yekaterinodar schoolteacher Serdyukova, involved in the case of Aleksandr Ulyanov, felt only relief when she was arrested. But this feeling was a thousand times stronger during epidemics of arrests when all around you they were hauling in people like yourself and still had not come for you; for some reason they were taking their time. After all, that kind of exhaustion, that kind of suffering, is worse than any kind of arrest, and not only for a person of limited courage. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Sadly but, perhaps, not altogether unexpectedly this society has had very limited success in achieving what is supposed to be the justification for its existence
the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest possible number of people. In so far as its citizens are saved from the major anxieties and responsibilities which normally surround the business of being a man, they transfer what appears to be an unvarying human capacity for worry to the most trivial things, making mountains out of molehills on a vast scale; and they have 'nervous breakdowns' over problems which men and women living under sterner conditions would hardly find time to notice. — Charles Le Gai Eaton

That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected ... The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme ... they are designed to be permanent ... The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. — John Marshall

A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing or to love the right person or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded. — Thomas Lewis

Waiting for a sign? What sign do you await, besides your own misery? What sign, besides the calendar that reminds you how many days and years you've thrown away? What other sign do you need besides the burning inner fire that demands you're better than what you've settled for? Stop lying to yourself! You have seen so many signs ... you know what you want ... no more delays ... no more excuses! Our days are too limited to wait for signs ... Life IS a sign! Go live it! — Steve Maraboli

Only worry about your own happiness, which doesn't have to be limited by anyone else's stupidity unless you allow it to be. — James Altucher

The decision to be positive is not one that disregards or belittles the sadness that exists. It is rather a conscious choice to focus on the good and to cultivate happiness
genuine happiness. Happiness is not a limited resource. And when we devote our energy and time to trivial matters, and choose to stress over things that ultimately are insignificant. From that point, we perpetuate our own sadness, and we lose sight of the things that really make us happy and rationalize our way out of doing amazing things. — Christopher Aiff

I don't discount that in the end, everything I do, say, write and am will amount to a whole lot of not much; I just don't think it's a relevant metric. The relevant metric is: Have I constructed a life that gives me happiness, allows me to give happiness, and allows for this life to have meaning within its admittedly limited context? If I am succeeding in this particular metric, I think I'm doing pretty well. — John Scalzi

We discover the vast difference between living and feeling alive when we discover inspiration." The quickest way to true happiness is not by ambling and obsessing about the limited pursuit of happiness, but by the immediate and actionable pursuit to be inspired. — Elaina Marie

We believe, as our founders did, that 'the pursuit of happiness' depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government. — Paul Ryan

For kids stuck in small towns everywhere who feel like you'll never escape, I hear you. We are all connected. We're all in this together. You are not alone.
No matter what happens, never *ever* give up.
Happiness is not limited. There's enough for everyone. You can start right now, today, to move toward a happier life. Your life is shaped by your choices. Make ones that will help you get where you want to go.
Find your place to belong. It may not be a physical place. At least, not yet. Maybe your place is somewhere you let your imagination take you. Maybe it's your vision of the way your ideal life will be.
Eventually, you'll find a real place that feels like home. Your whole world will open up in ways you kept believing were possible. And you'll be so happy you held on long enough to make it there.
So let's do this thing. Let's own what makes up unique. Let's refuse to allow haters to stop us from moving forward. Let's turn our dreams into reality.
Starting now. — Susane Colasanti

The mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. Like a rider on the back of an elephant, the conscious reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does. — Jonathan Haidt