Not Looking For Happiness Quotes & Sayings

And looking at these faded snapshots I see, the child that survives in me sees with a pang that - I am old enough to be that man's father, and he has been dead for nearly twenty years, and yet it troubles me that he was happy. Why? In some way his happiness was at that time (and forever after, it would seem) a threat to me. It was not the kind of happiness that children are included in, but why should that trouble me now? I do not even begin to understand it. — William Maxwell

People will survive, and they will find happiness. Happiness only comes when you're not looking for it. — Hugh Laurie

I'm not denying the importance of achieving one's goals, maintaining one's health, or keeping one's children clothed and fed - but most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. — Sam Harris

Imagine that you traveled all over the world, looking for happiness, looking for thrills to pass the time. Imagine seeing everything there is to see and still not finding happiness. Well, that would give you a very bleak outlook on life, would it not? — Tricia Levenseller

I've realized through the years that I just find happiness in other things, whether it's my dogs or my friends or, like, looking at the sunset. So if I were to wish for something else, it would just to be happy all the time, to have a superpower of not letting things affect me, and to be true to who I am, always. — Kylie Jenner

After spending most of her life scanning the horizon for slights and threats, genuine and imagined, she knew the real threat to her happiness came not from the dot in the distance, but from looking for it. Expecting it. Waiting for it. And in some cases, creating it. Her father had jokingly accused her of living in the wreckage of her future. Until one day she'd looked deep into his eyes and saw he wasn't joking. He was warning her. — Louise Penny

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others. — Martin Luther King Jr.

If you are looking for love, you may not find it, but if you love every one for sure, they will return it. — Debasish Mridha

He was looking forward to his visit not only for the pleasure of the shrewd dealing which far transcended mere gross profit, but with the sheer happiness of being out of bed and moving once more at free will, even though a little weakly, in the sun and air which men drank and moved in and talked and dealt with one another - a pleasure no small part of which lay in the fact that he had not started yet and was absolutely nothing under heaven to make him start until he wanted to. He did not still feel weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body's slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body's pleasure instead of the body thrall to time's headlong course. — William Faulkner

What I am looking for is not happiness. I work solely because it is impossible for me to do anything else. — Alberto Giacometti

He kept looking for new experiences, and though he was very successful at everything he attempted, it did not bring him happiness. Remember this, success alone does not bring happiness. Nor does failure have to bring unhappiness. — Rohinton Mistry

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! — Sahara Sanders

Many of us seem to live our lives looking for happiness. That is not always a bad thing, but it can be if we continually believe that happiness is someplace else and not in the present. — Barbara Barrington Jones

For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say! — Wilhelm Reich

Even when I was a very young man,
I was looking for the purpose of life;
I was looking for happiness all over the world;
In fame and in glamour,
in wealth and in splendor,
not knowing how foolish it was.
Happiness is not out there.
Happiness is not in wealth or splendor.
Happiness is inside me,
in my mind,
in my thoughts,
It is in my perception of the world. — Debasish Mridha

I took [Kate's] hand in mine, and felt her fingers squeeze back. And I thought: home. It took me completely by surprise. But I suppose that once you bid farewell to your first home, you're always looking for another - that place where you can feel happy and strong and at your best. For three years I'd called the Aurora home. But now that I lived in Paris, it was not the city itself that was home. It was Kate. — Kenneth Oppel

Well Buddhism, 'shmoodism', I didn't go to India looking for Buddhism. I was looking for truth, or God, or a better way of life or happiness, fulfillment, meaning, purpose. And a way to become peace in the world and not just fight for peace, as we had in the 60's. — Surya Das

Maybe we all go through life carefully constructing our profiles to say what we're looking for, all while not saying anything that might scare people away... and after time we start to believe what we're putting out there. Our fear of people rejecting the things that make us happy limits how much happiness we can actually find. I guess when we're a bit more honest with ourselves and others, we might get more of what we actually desire. — Tyler Oakley

Today I walked on the lion-coloured hills with only cypresses for company, until the sunset caught me, turned the brush to copper set the clouds to one great roof of flame above the earth, so that I walk through fire, beneath fire, and all in beauty. Being alone I could not be alone, but felt (closer than flesh) the presence of those who once had burned in such transfigurations. My happiness ran through the centuries in one continual brightness. Looking down, I saw the earth beneath me like a rose petaled with mountains, fragrant with deep peace. — Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth

Great wealth can make a man no happier than moderate means, unless he has the luck to continue in propsperity to the end. Many very rich men have been unfortunate, and many with a modest competence have had good luck. The former are better off than the latter in two respects only, whereas the poor but lucky man has the advantage in many ways; for though the rich have the means to satisfy their appetites and to bear calamities, and the poor have not, the poor, if they are lucky, are more likely to keep clear of trouble, and will have besides the blessings of a sound body, health, freedom from trouble, fine children, and good looks.
Now if a man thus favoured died as he has lived, he will be just the one you are looking for: the only sort of person who deserves to be called happy. But mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky. — Herodotus

. If there is a picture on the wall of a room, everyone in that room thinks the person in the picture is looking at him. Similarly, in whichever way we look at Krsna He reciprocates. He is the most complete in everything. He is the most complete in beauty, the most complete politician, and He has the most complete affection for His devotees. For example, Bhismadeva took a vow during the battle of Kurukshetra, "I am not the son of Maharaja Santanu until I can make Krsna take up a weapon." Krsna thus gave up His own promise in the battle, just for the happiness of Bhismadeva. Therefore, how He is bhakta-vatsala, how kind He is to His devotees! — Sri Srimad Bhaktivedanta Narayana Gosvami Maharaja

Don't try to change the world; just change yourself. Why? Because the whole world is only relative to the eyes that are looking at it. Your world actually only exists for as long as you exist and with the death of you, includes the death of your world. Therefore, if there is no peace in your heart; you will find no peace in this world, if there is no happiness in your life; you will find no happiness anywhere around you, if you have no love in your heart; you will not find love anywhere and if you do not fly around freely inside your own soul like a bird with perfectly formed wings; then there will never be any freedom for you regardless if you are on a mountaintop removed from all attachments to all of mankind! Even the mountaintop cannot give you freedom if it is not already flying around there inside your own soul! So I say, change yourself. Not the world. — C. JoyBell C.

One minute I'm just another rabbit and happy about it, next minute whazzaam, I'm thinking. That's a major drawback if you're looking for happiness as a rabbit, let me tell you. You want grass and sex, not thoughts like What's it all about, when you get right down to it? — Terry Pratchett

I was so happy it was like a food, like I'd been stuffed with it, a foie gras goose of happiness; happy enough to know, fully, that I was happy, and foolishly, for one second, to dare the thought: "Imagine - imagine if each Saturday morning could be like this," and in the middle of the singing, I blushed, not even looking at her, because even just having it I knew there was something wrong about the thought. Another boundary crossing - an acknowledgment to myself, so fleeting but so dangerous, of how hungry I was. — Claire Messud

There's not much here that tempts me though. I look for folks who appear to be having fun, but can't find any. Row after row of sad faces hooked up to slot machines like arms connected to IV's, drugs pumping into their minds. Table after table of drained souls looking to leave scraps of happiness and dignity on the green felt of the blackjack table. — Neil M. Hanson

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them. — T.H. White

Can You Imagine?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that. — Mary Oliver

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details came out: the stag's horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father's sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash-tray, a manuscript-book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging this new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: 'No, you're not going to get away from us, and you're not going to be different, but you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectations, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you. — Leo Tolstoy

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

Both the Old Testament and the Quran tell a similar story of Adam, the first man, who threw happiness away, and was consigned by God to live a harsh life scratching a living from the earth. Earth is not a place where everlasting and permanent happiness is found. Looking for it here is a distraction that diverts us from pursuing moderate contentment and peace of mind. — A.A. Alebraheem

Possible Ending #16 (Life Imitates Art Imitates Life Imitates Art Imitates): I'd seen this movie. Obvious ending: outright betrayal, lesson learned, life is heartbreak, people who mean well still fuck you over, everyone's sad, greedy, looking out for number one, no consideration for the fragile fat boy whose displayed cynicism only masks a deeper hope that everyone's okay, will ultimately end up all right, that love exists, that happiness may not be stable but at least comes in bursts, that everything worthwhile wasn't just a self-created illusion. — Adam Wilson

In spite of what we say, we don't want happiness. It's simply not enough to satisfy our deepest longings. We are looking for something more, something transcendent - a reason to be happy. — Jeff Goins

She knew her duty inside and out. The prosperity of the cash drawer brought happiness to husband and wife. Not that Madame Puta was bad looking, not at all, she could even, like so many others, have been rather pretty, but she was so careful, so distrustful that she stopped short of beauty just as she stopped short of life - her hair was a little too well dressed, her smile a little too facile and sudden, and her gestures a bit too abrupt or too furtive. You racked your brains trying to figure out what was too calculated about her and why you always felt uneasy when she came near you. This instinctive revulsion that shopkeepers inspire in anyone who goes near them who knows what's what, is one of the few consolations for being as down at heel as people who don't sell anything to anybody tend to be. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

There's a void inside most people.
It's been created by not being contented with who we are, not being happy with what we have, not being present and looking for something more, better, more exciting out there.
And we've always been trying to fill this void with something external. — Lidiya K.

Looking beyond life's imperfections allows one to be able to find happiness. Life is not perfect, ever. For me, remembering that life is flawed, people are flawed, and therefore relationships are flawed, allows me to look at the flaws and imperfections as part of life itself. A perfect life includes all of the flaws associated with what and who you surround yourself with. My life and my means of living it are no exception. I was, as all people are, flawed. I accepted myself as being flawed no differently than I accepted others as being so. — Scott Hildreth

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

And besides, we're not really all that different. Although I think I'm a little more ... "
"What?"
"Optimistic." She nudged him with her shoulder. "You're Eeyore."
He blinked. "You think I'm Eeyore?"
"You tell me. I take my empty glass and try to fill it up with what happiness I can find. Friends, family, my work ... And then there's you."
He raised a brow. "Me."
She nudged him again, looking playful and damn sexy while she was at it. It was the short shorts with the boots, he decided. Or everything. It was everything.
"You take that empty glass," she said, happily analyzing him. "And you wonder what the heck to do with it. You don't need the glass, you don't have time for the glass. Hell, you'll just drink from a spigot if you get thirsty. And in any case, there's probably another one up the road if that one runs out, so - — Jill Shalvis

Happiness is your inherent nature. In the hustle and bustle of life, you have forgotten a part of yourself, and looking for it outside. Fill this void with happiness that is sustainable, not transitory; that illuminates your life and that of others, that is life giving and so natural. — Sanchita Pandey

Life is not a maze where you have your eyes on the gaps, life is a beautiful journey, stop looking for the gaps. — Malti Bhojwani

And it's true what I read about joy. It's the kind of happiness that not only fills you up but spills over. Really, all you have to do is look for it, and then have the strength to let it in. And believe it or not, that's the hardest part. — Jolene Perry

As I have said, the Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain. It rarely, or ambiguously, answers the backward-looking question "Why?" Instead, it raises the very different, forward-looking question, "To what end?"We are not put on earth merely to satisfy our desires, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.We are here to be changed, to be made more like God in order to prepare us for a lifetime with him. And that process may be served by the mysterious pattern of all creation: pleasure sometimes emerges against a background of pain, evil may be transformed into good, and suffering may produce something of value. — Philip Yancey

If you are looking to outer, passing, mutable things for either happiness or security, you are not putting God first. — Emmet Fox

Try not to be self-conscious [ ... ] or so critical. Don't mope around looking for someone else to make you happy, and remember that the vast majority of homosexuals are looking for a superman to love and find it very difficult to love anyone merely human, which we unfortunately happen to be. — Andrew Holleran

If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature - an aspect that is as deep, important, and interesting as sexuality or language (which we study intensely). Here's another treasonous thought: If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God. That's the topic of the final chapter. — Jonathan Haidt

she knew the real threat to her happiness came not from the dot in the distance, but from looking for it. Expecting it. Waiting for it. And in some cases, creating it. — Louise Penny

Because happiness isn't made of fun. It's made of solid, real things. It's made of paychecks and clean clothing, and hot food and healthy children, and a man who can look you in the eye when he comes home because he has nothing to hide. It's not so rare. In fact, it's so common people don't notice it. They look for roses when they should be looking for indoor plumbing." Ma, — Kathleen Tessaro

You're discussing recreational drugs?" He stood and shut the door and came back looking very serious indeed. I was chastened, as I should have been. "Sorry. What have I never minded about?" "Well, I have truthfully always imagined it was my talent, my gift to introduce my friends to each other. Not one I could ever use for my own happiness, I must say. — Peter Carey

He wagged his tail, and his whole body tingled. He realized the emptiness inside was not filled with happiness. Blue felt a glow within that was a result of more than just the warm sunshine on a spring day.
It was more than just the gentle tumble of the waterfall, or the wind or the sound of birds. It was much, much more he knew. He looked about him and he knew he had found what he had been looking for.
He had found more than his true heart's desire ...
He had found a forever home! — Michael Delaware

Can you hold happiness? Can you drink it? Can you taste it? Can you touch it? Of course not, it is immaterial. So, stop looking for it in the material world! Happiness is experienced within; when we bridge the gap between what we want to experience and how we choose to behave. — Steve Maraboli

I saw all this around me constantly, there were girls everywhere, the supply was infinite, a well, no, I was drifting in an ocean of women, I saw several hundred of them every day, all with their own individual ways of moving, standing, turning, walking, holding and twisting their heads, blinking, looking - take for example a feature such as their eyes, which expressed their utter uniqueness, everything that lived and breathed was here in this one person, was revealed, regardless of whether the gaze was meant for me or not. Oh, those sparkling eyes! Oh, those dark eyes! Oh, that glint of happiness! The alluring darkness! Or, for that matter, the unintelligent, the stupid eyes! For in them too there was an appeal, and no small appeal either: the stupid vacant eyes, the open mouth in that perfect beautiful body.
All this was never far from my mind, and all of them were thirty seconds away from the only thing I wanted - but on the other side of a chasm. — Karl Ove Knausgard