The Art Of Happiness Quotes & Sayings

I don't trust art that promises a 24-hour joyride. In fact, there seems to be a modern sense of entitlement for such constant "ups," which is a repugnant attitude any way one chooses to look at it. I definitely believe in the possibility of happiness, though; it's just something that I think, rightfully, is rare in its genuine form, and that it can't be counterfeited. — Chris Ware

There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life. — Edward Gibbon

I give a damn if any fan recalls my legacy, I'm trying to live life in the sight of GOD's memory. — Mos Def

Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself. — Daisaku Ikeda

WU WEI

flow of Life governed by Tao
flow of change

spontaneous
natural
effortless
acting through non-action

connecting with Earth and Moon and Sun
through
being

not inert or lazy or passive
but swimming swiftly
within the current
merging Life with Tao

quiet and watchful
not-interfering
receptive alert directly connected

acting without action
trusting detached without desire
spontaneous natural effortless
Living — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Happiness is the art of relaxation. — Maxwell Maltz

The thing is we can't be attached to anything we've experienced up to this point in our life - any person, any situation, any outcomes, any happiness, any pain - any of it. — Art Hochberg

There's another wonderful Italian expression: l'arte d'arrangiarsi-the art of making something out of nothing. The art of turning a few simple ingredients into a feast,or a few gathered friends into a festival. Anyone with a talent of happiness can do this, not only the rich. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don't know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress. — Paramahansa Yogananda

This household happiness did not come all at once, but John and Meg had found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to use it, unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy. This is the sort of shelf on which young wives and mothers may consent to be laid, safe from the restless fret and fever of the world, finding loyal lovers in the little sons and daughters who cling to them, undaunted by sorrow, poverty, or age, walking side by side, through fair and stormy weather, with a faithful friend, who is, in the true sense of the good old Saxon word, the 'house-band,' and learning, as Meg learned, that a woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife and mother. — Louisa May Alcott

Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians. — Sarah Moore Grimke

The key to finding happiness in this life is realizing that the only way to overcome is to transcend; to find happiness in the simple pleasures, to master the art of just being. — Brianna Wiest

The art of happiness is also the art of suffering well. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Learn the art of living. Make your life as an ageless art, then you will never grow older. — Debasish Mridha

Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore happiness and cleave unto joy! Now, now, let's not sugar-coat things! Lust has a lot more to do with life and what is the good of life if you do not carry much lust inside of you at all times? And joy is a noble thing, but happiness though fleeting can be found every day and in every small little way! — C. JoyBell C.

This art of participating in happiness is one of the foundations if you want to be happy. — Rajneesh

Instead of pleasing, learn the art of happiness. — Rajneesh

The art of letting go is simply about personal empowerment. Realizing what you're in charge of, realizing what you control, and more importantly, what you don't control. — Steve Maraboli

. I want to say many things I must omit. It is not fit to wake the soul by tender strokes of art, or to ruminate upon happiness we might enjoy, lest absences become intolerable. — David McCullough

The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings that have been suppressed and have built up inside. There is a voiceless cry resting in the depths of our souls, waiting for expression. Art gives the soul's feelings voice and form. — Daisaku Ikeda

I think of the friendships I've strained, the generosity I've exploited, the bridges I've torched. Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil; with them, forgive yourself. There may be hope for me yet. — Anthony Ervin

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

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things. — Henry Ward Beecher

In the height of thy prosperity expect adversity, but fear it not. If it come not, thou art the more sweetly possessed of the happiness thou hast, and the more strongly confirmed. If it come, thou art the more gently dispossessed of the happiness thou hadst, and the more firmly prepared. — Francis Quarles

Love is an act of art ... It is this creative quality of love, that it seeks to reshape the world for its sake and to create happiness, which makes love radical and potentially seditious ... the inverse is also true: art is an act of love. — Rod Dubey

Kiss the hand of him who can renounce what he has publicly taught, when convicted of his error; and who, with heartfelt joy, embraces the truth, though with the sacrifice of favorite opinions. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Art is an imagination, projection, and reflection of the mind in a particular form that society can internalize and enjoy. — Debasish Mridha

Don't be fooled into thinking that love is special. That it'll fill you up forever. Anyone can fall in love, but only you can make the art you were born for. And that's the kind of happiness that lasts. — J.C. Lillis

It's not the job of the child to make the parent happy. It's the job of the parent to take care of their own happiness. — Art Hochberg

Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die. — Nicolaus Cusanus

Many people have the desire to let go, but they're not able to do so because they don't yet have enough insight; they haven't seen other alternatives, other doorways to peace and happiness. Fear is an element that prevents us from letting go. We're fearful that if we let go we'll have nothing else to cling to. Letting go is a practice; it's an art. One day, when you're strong enough and determined enough, you'll let go of the afflictions that make you suffer. — Thich Nhat Hanh

It is by studying little things, that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. — Gretchen Rubin

The art of happiness is being content with what you have,' she would say, looking with apparent satisfaction out of the dusty windows at the garden, yellowing like an uncut hayfield in the October sunshine. — Philippa Gregory

(about William Blake)
As for Blake's happiness
a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."
And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition ... He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."
... He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. — Brenda Ueland

Happiness is the art of learning how to get joy from your substance. — Jim Rohn

But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. — Gustave Flaubert

Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity, embedded in the arts and crafts. — Satish Kumar

Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions (happy is boring, evil is interesting) about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don't view peace of mind as a threat to their creative power often believe that it's a rare commodity attained through dumb luck ... .It's possible to define a more supple variety of happiness that does not paralyze the will or sap ambition ... .the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident. — Rob Brezsny

Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply. — Henry David Thoreau

Imagine you saw a colour in your dream, which you have never seen before. It doesn't consist of any colours or shades that you know. Trying to describe that colour would be as difficult as trying to belive that there is enough love & compassion in the world so every human can feel happiness. — Egor Kraft

Art is an expression of love, which you can see on the canvas. — Debasish Mridha

[ ... ] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness. — Albert Camus

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection. — Bertrand Russell

And Lynnie understood. There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.
p 313
"The sky was crying outside, and as she watched the drops come down, she thought: A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn't really small if it makes a lost hope less sad."
p 318
Lynnie about the lost hope of finding Homan, the hope of seeing the lighthouse/connecting with her daughter and how selling her art work was doing something about it. — Rachel Simon

My child, if you want to have a beautiful and happy life ... 2 things you need ... learn the art of love and practice it with your beloved one. — Carlos Barrios

A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also stains us daily in everything we think and do. It gives us optimism and hope. — Chris Prentiss

Art ... is as much a source of happiness for the beginner as for the master. One forgets everything in one's work ... — Marie Bashkirtseff

Never blame any day in your life. Good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience, and the worst days give you a lesson. — Sukhraj S. Dhillon

All life is an art of yourself, so draw it carefully to make it the best. — Debasish Mridha

Self-development is a way of Life. Our Self-Development never ends. We are never too young or too old for personal growth.
We have an amazing potential to reach our highest potential, to have truly inspiring careers and loving relationships.
Unfortunately, often we walk through our lives asleep, we let our habits rule us, and find it difficult to change our beliefs. Recognizing the power of our Mind and the power of our Soul, learning the art of Concentration and Love, we are learning to Live with the Flow, not against it.
It is in our nature to learn and grow. For happiness we need to learn to Love, we need to learn to Concentrate and we should keep the flow and energy of inspiration within our lives. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom ... — Gerald Brenan

His music gave no lesser joy than a vacation. Creativity in his music and its success stood out as an example to all kinds of artists, in the lectures of business speakers, engineers, and to anyone who built or constructed something in their respective profession. — Amit Kalantri

Walk in nature. Take the time to be still. Practicing arts, arranging flowers, doing some drawing, working on a computer, brings a sense of stillness into your life. — Frederick Lenz

My heart was full and uplifted; it seemed that in my soul the question arose whether such things as Art, literature, science encompassed and completed life or whether there was still something in the distance which encompassed it even more completely and filled it with a far greater happiness. — Adalbert Stifter

Every artist wants his work to be permanent. But what is? The Aswan Dam covered some of the greatest art in the world. Venice is sinking. Great books and pictures were lost in the Florence floods. In the meantime we still enjoy butterflies. — Romare Bearden

On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution, and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt, whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness. He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day, in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a body, which really wants but little. — Edmund Burke

We will be happy if we can get around to the idea that art is not an outside and extra thing; that it is a natural outcome of a state of being; that the state of being is the important thing; that a man can be a carpenter and be a great man. — Robert Henri

You know that saying 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing'? That's so true of positive psychology. Our latest research tells us that the pursuit of happiness is a delicate art. Certain approaches to seeking happiness are now known to backfire, whereas others are effective. — Barbara Fredrickson

Every man whose tastes have been allowed to develop in wrong directions, or in whom the best tastes have failed of higher perfection, loses thereby from the inner joy and outer value of his whole life. Every good taste is a source and guarantee of happy healthy hours and days, and thus of the enrichment and elevation of life. A reasonable capacity to appreciate music and art quite suffices to enrich life and exercise a wholesome influence upon character. The taste for good reading is inseparable from a taste for good thinking. — Edward O. Sisson

People are surprised at how down-to-earth I am. I like to stay home on Friday nights and listen to 'The Art of Happiness' by the Dalai Lama. — Carmen Electra

I started to discover the meaning of happiness when I started to discover
and practice
the art of acceptance. When I started to accept life for what it was and I started to accept whatever situation I was in as the way things were, I started to see that my happiness depended on my own attitude. When I started focusing on getting the most out of my life the way it was rather than trying to turn it into what I thought it should be, I started to realize that I was, indeed, becoming a much happier person. — Tom Walsh

Happiness is an art mastered by the very few. Genuinely happy people are as rare as Christians who believe in God. — Albert Vigoleis Thelen

To live long and achieve happiness, cultivate the art of radiating happiness. — Malcolm Forbes

Your actions create an "energy vortex" that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture. — Chris Prentiss

The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire. — Arthur Phillips

The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes. Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened. I love you. Thou art God.
-Valentine Michael Smith — Robert A. Heinlein

Happiness is the art of making a bouquet of those flowers within reach. — Bob Goddard

If one takes meaning into consideration, happiness might best be described as "a zest for life in all its complexity," as Sissela Bok writes in her book. To achieve it means to "attach our lives to something larger than ourselves." To be happy, one must do. It could be something as simple as teaching Sunday school or as grand as leading nonviolent protests. It could be as cerebral as seeking the cure for cancer or as physical as climbing mountains. It could be creating art. And it could be raising a child - my "best piece of poetrie," as Ben Jonson said in his elegy for his seven-year-old son. — Jennifer Senior

She hesitated: "Do you love your wife?"
Mersault smiled: "That's not essential."
"You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters - all that matters, really - is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest - women, art, success - is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries."
"What matters to me is a certain quality of happiness. I can only find it in a certain struggle with its opposite - a stubborn and violent struggle ... — Albert Camus

Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rock

If you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,
maybe you can grasp it. — Dick Allen

And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzling over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own. — Hermann Hesse

Inasmuch as art preserves, with the promise of happiness, the memory of the goal that failed, it can enter, as a 'regulative idea,' the desperate struggle for changing the world. Against all fetishism of the productive forces, against the continued enslavement of individuals by the objective conditions (which remain those of domination), art represents the ultimate goal of all revolutions: the freedom and happiness of the individual. — Herbert Marcuse

One can trace the relics of this former happiness in the trim shapes of the buildings, the occasional graceful churches, and the evidences of original art and background in bits of detail here and there - a worn flight of steps, a wormy pair of decorative columns of pilasters, or a fragment of once green space with bent and rusted iron railing. — H.P. Lovecraft

I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music and verse. I hope we will come to an understanding that the material used is only incidental, that there is artist in every man; and that to him the possibility of development and of expression and the happiness of creation is as much a right and as much a duty to himself, as to any of those who work in the especially ticketed ways. — Robert Henri

There is a distinction between going after desirable things in life and needing them for our happiness. We can go after those things with detachment, without our moods ever being affected by the results of our obligations and efforts. This is an important part of the Epicurean art of living the good life. — Hiram Crespo

When my words are concealed
With lies and disguises, truth and beyond
Insecurities in the veil of trust
Betrayal in bounds of lies
It's just the charm of words darling
Giving the illusion of happiness inside misery — Irum Zahra

The art of happy-making begins when we find our happiness within instead of without. — Jennifer Dukes Lee

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies. — William Faulkner

Art - in all of its forms - is not exclusive. It does not belong to any class, cast or country. Its matchless ability to express the most basic human impulses is only strengthened by its universality. It transcends language and culture, bridges social and political chasms and nurtures a collective understanding. It engenders hope, rebuilds self-respect and restores humanity. Art is a motivator, a force of empowerment and a source of support for people of all races, nationalities, ages, economic situations and genders. It is ageless, timeless and breaks through many barriers. Art brings strength to those who lack confidence, wish for a mental escape from harsh environments or who seek to restore happiness and hope in times of great need." Artfully AWARE 5 — Artfully Aware

That's why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You see, from where I stand, there are a couple of ways. You continue your journey and you will find your path or the path is already there and you aren't just able to see it. — Ackshat Deoli

The art of happiness is to serve all, and all shall serve you. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

It is not your passing thoughts or brilliant ideas so much as your plain everyday habits that control your life ... Live simply. Don't get caught in the machine of the world - it is too exacting. By the time you get what you are seeking your nerves are gone, the heart is damaged, and the bones are aching. Resolve to develop your spiritual powers more earnestly from now on. Learn the art of right living. If you have joy you have everything,so learn to be glad and contented ... Have happiness now. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I remembered the taste of good Italian coffee in my London flat, brewed at the expense of time and a good deal of mess, compared to the sort that came out of machines in the office at the press of a button. I remembered walking to art school, through the windy winter, over hills and heaths: how much gladder I was to reach the rich warmth and to toast my hands on a radiator, than if I had gone by car. I remembered the nickels my father gave me as a child for being good: how much more I valued them than I would a dollar bill given all at once for no reason. Of course God as the ultimate parent could give happiness for the asking, just as my father could have given a handful of dollar bills, but at the age of five would I have known its value, or would it have looked to me just like a wad of grubby green paper? — Sumangali Morhall

The art of new, and perhaps the art of happiness, is not absolute victory for either new or old but balance between them. Birds do not defy gravity or let it bind them to the ground. They use it to fly. — Kevin Ashton

My art is that of the 35mm kind; my poetry is of the lead and ink kind; my happiness is of the product of both; and my legacy is of the story of my soul, that my life left behind — Jeremy Aldana

It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness people cherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring of their life. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in the pride of power, and others in the achievements of art and literature; a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in search for knowledge. — Helen Keller

At the same time, I declare both of you the heirs of the little property (if it can be so called) belonging to me. Divide it fairly; agree together, and help one another. What you have done to grieve me, that, you know, has long been forgiven. Thee, brother Carl, I thank in particular, for the affection thou hast shown me of late. My wish is that you may live more happily, more exempt from care, than I have done. Recommend virtue to your children; that alone - not wealth - can give happiness; I speak from experience. It was this that upheld me even in affliction; it is owing to this and to my art that I did not terminate my life by suicide. Farewell, and love one another. I thank all friends, especially Prince Lichnowsky and Professor Schmidt. I wish that Prince L.'s instruments may remain in the possession of one of you; but let no quarrel arise between you on account of them. — Anton Schindler

Zen is a journey of exploration and a way of living that, in and of itself, does not belong to any one religion or tradition. It is about experiencing life in the here and now and about removing the dualistic distinctions between "I" and "you" between "subject" and "objective", between our spiritual and our ordinary, everyday activities. — Chris Prentiss

Sonnet: Political Greatness
Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame,
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other.
Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection towards the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms - around which, therefore, stands an uncanny but fascinating halo of brilliance - evoke both fear and Titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe.
The fear and enthusiasm we experience at the sight of perfect mechanisms are in exact contrast to the happiness we feel at the sight of a perfect work of art. We sense an attack on our integrity, on our wholeness. That arms and legs are lost or harmed is not yet the greatest danger. — Ernst Junger

A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it. — Francois Arago

The decent man and the lover holds back even when he could obtain what he wishes. To win this silent consent is to make use of all the violence permitted in love. To read it in the eyes, to see it in the ways in spite of the mouth's denial, that is the art of he who knows how to love. If he then completes his happiness, he is not brutal, he is decent. He does not insult chasteness; he respects it; he serves it. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

This is a life you do not understand. Yes, your home is in the city, and you have furnished it with vanities, with pictures and books; but you have a wife and a servant and a hundred expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world and are never at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask me intellectual questions and try to trip me up, then I will reply, for example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly men are mere specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you should go so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much in this matter, too, and reply thus: Eternity is merely unborn time, nothing but unborn time. — Knut Hamsun

I believe economic growth should translate into the happiness and progress of all. Along with it, there should be development of art and culture, literature and education, science and technology. We have to see how to harness the many resources of India for achieving common good and for inclusive growth. — Pratibha Patil

There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship. — Bertrand Russell

Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human. — Paul McCartney

Most men seem to live for themselves, without much or any regard for thy glory, or for the good of others;
They earnestly desire and eagerly pursue the riches, honor, and pleasures of this life, as if they supposed that wealth, greatness, merriment, could make their immortal souls happy;
But, alas, what false delusive dreams are these!
And how miserable ere long will those be that sleep in them, for all out happiness consists in loving thee and being holy as thou art holy. — Arthur Bennett

Eating in Italy is essentially a family art, practiced for and by the family. The finest accomplishments of the home cook are not reserved like the good silver and china for special occasions or for impressing guests, but are offered daily for the pleasure and happiness of the family group. — Marcella Hazan

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up. — Charles Morgan