What Causes Happiness Quotes & Sayings

Happiness is a decision, not an experience. You can decide to be happy without what you thought you needed in order to be happy, and you will be. Your experience is the result of your decision, not the cause of it. — Neale Donald Walsch

No matter how many possessions we acquire, they will not provide us with any lasting happiness and freedom. On the contrary, it is often our pursuit of material possessions that causes our problems. If we want ultimate happiness and freedom from suffering, we must engage in the supreme practices of training the mind. There is no other way. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

So if loss of what gives happiness causes you distress when it fades, you can now understand that such happiness is worthless. It is said, those who lose themselves in their desire for things also lose their innate nature by being vulgar. — Zhuangzi

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague. — Norman Douglas

When we consider the incidents of former days, and perceive, while reviewing the long line of causes, how the most important events of our lives originated in the most trifling circumstances; how the beginning of our greatest happiness or greatest misery is to be attributed to a delay, to an accident, to a mistake; we learn a lesson of profound humility. — Arthur Helps

We've forgotten that chasing happiness or peace only causes it to seem further away. It's a little like wild kittens. You can chase them all day long and not catch them. But, if you sit quietly and allow them to come to you, you will tame them in time. — Simon Gray

What causes misery is always trying to get away from the facts of life, always trying to avoid pain and seek happiness - this sense of ours that there could be lasting security and happiness available to us if we could only do the right thing. — Pema Chodron

Happiness refers to feelings, virtue refers to actions, and those actions can cause those feelings. But not necessarily and not exclusively. — Daniel Gilbert

A person who thinks he is right, causes great hurt to others and that is why hurt will come to him. A person who believes 'I am right', causes a lot of pain to others. — Dada Bhagwan

I learned one thing; you never do anything for fame or money. You only do things 'cause they're fun or good. If you can combine the two at the same time, you can make a contribution to the world and have a lot of happiness. — Abbie Hoffman

Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsability towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The main cause of suffering is egoistic desire for one's own comfort and happiness. — Dalai Lama

For the sake of your health and happiness, replace the loss that causes sadness with the thanks that yields gratitude. — Charles F. Glassman

Success, wealth, good health and nurturing relationships are by-products of happiness, not the cause. — Deepak Chopra

The only means by which one could attain complete happiness is to avoid living in constant expectation of it. It's the expectation that causes our unhappiness and consequent bitterness about life — Mohammed Naseehu Ali

Once we experience and feel this inter-dependence of all living beings,we will cease to hurt, humiliate, exploit and kill another. We will want to free all sentient beings from suffering. This is karuna, compassion, which in turn gives rise to the responsibility to create happiness and its causes for all. — Suresh Jindal

We can't have happiness if we cause others unhappiness. — Sharon Gannon

I also believe that few people remain completely untouched by the thought that instead of the life they lead there might also be another, where all actions proceed from a very personal state of excitement. Where actions have meanings, not just causes. And where a person, to use a trivial word, is happy, and not just nervously tormenting himself. — Robert Musil

The prison population consists of heterogeneous elements; but, taking only those who are usually described as 'the criminals' proper, and of whom we have heard so much lately from Lombroso and his followers, what struck me most as regards them was that the prisons, which are considered as preventive of anti-social deeds, are exactly the institutions for breeding them. Every one knows that absence of education, dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, misdirected love of adventure, gambling propensities, absence of energy, an untrained will, and carelessness about the happiness of others are the causes which bring this class of people before the courts. Now I was deeply impressed during my imprisonment by the fact that it is exactly these defects of human nature
each one of them
which the prison breeds in its inmates; and it is bound to breed them because it is a prison, and will breed them so long as it exists. — Pyotr Kropotkin

Constriction causes pain, relaxation causes happiness. — Sean O'Donoghue Morgan

Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however; duly, garfish babysit for dirty catfish children, helping catfish babies get instructional education just because garfish get delight assisting infants' growth and famously inspire confidence in immature catfish, giving experience (and joy even); however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply; joy fades but hurt feelings bring just grief; inevitable irritation hastens feeling blue; however, jovial children declare happiness, blowfishes' evil causes dejection, blues; accordingly, always glorift jolly, friendly garfish! — John Green

When we give freely, we feel full and complete; when we withhold, we feel small, petty, impotent, and lacking. We are meant to learn this great truth, that giving fulfills us, while withholding and trying to get causes us to feel empty and even more needy. This truth runs counter to our programming, which drives us to try to get something from others to fulfill our neediness, only to end up even more needy, grasping, lacking, and unfulfilled. — Gina Lake

Overcoming attachment does not mean becoming cold and indifferent. On the contrary, it means learning to have relaxed control over our mind through understanding the real causes of happiness and fulfillment, and this enables us to enjoy life more and suffer less. — Kathleen McDonald

Happiness, however, is not the result of any one single cause. It is the result of many ideal states of being grouped together into one harmonious whole. — Christian D. Larson

Feel that you are happy without any cause for happiness. — Goswami Kriyananda

Ignorance causes pain, but awareness creates happiness. Therefore, look for enlightenment every day. — Linda Alfiori

Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified. — Polly Toynbee

Sadness was, she well knew, not something that could be cured. It was not, in fact, a failing, not a flaw, not an illness of spirit. Sadness was never without reason, and to assert that it marked some kind of dysfunction did little more than prove ignorance or, worse, cowardly evasiveness in the one making the assertion. As if happiness was the only legitimate way of being. As if those failing at it needed to be locked away, made soporific with medications; as if the causes of sadness were merely traps and pitfalls in the proper climb to blissful contentment, things to be edged round or bridged, or leapt across on wings of false elation. — Steven Erikson

The causes for happiness are within me, as are the answers to all life's important questions. — Narissa Doumani

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

You're the most important part of my life, Lily. I want to be what brings you happiness. Not what causes you to hurt. — Colleen Hoover

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. — Jeremy Bentham

Hard it is to train the mind, which goes where it likes and does what it wants. An unruly mind suffers and causes suffering whatever it does. But a well-trained mind brings health and happiness. — Anonymous

It may be that I lead the life I've planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than the ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another and that one a third; it's just possible that a few people will see that my way of life offers happiness and peace, and that they in their turn will teach what they have learned to others. — W. Somerset Maugham

Now although man is created for the possession of happiness, yet, having deviated from his true end, his nature has become deformed and is entirely repugnant to true beatitude. And on this account we are forced to submit to God this depraved nature of ours which fills our understanding with so many occupations, and causes us to deviate from the true path, in order that he may entirely consume it until nothing remains there but himself; otherwise the soul could never attain stability nor repose, for she was created for no other end. — Catherine Of Genoa

The only cause of happiness is love. The only cause of suffering is self grasping. — Garchen Rinpoche

The greatest problem of human life is fear. It is fear that robs us of
happiness. It is fear that causes us to settle for far less than we are
capable of. It is fear that is the root cause of negative emotions,
unhappiness and problems in human relationships. — Brian Tracy

Most of us need time to work through pain and loss. We can find all manner of reasons for postponing forgiveness. One of these reasons is waiting for the wrongdoers to repent before we forgive them. Yet such a delay causes us to forfeit the peace and happiness that could be ours. — James E. Faust

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don't be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this - fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether yo u are living or dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Supreme happiness will be the greatest cause of misery, and the perfection of wisdom the occassion of folly. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the domains through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life - achieve happiness - the answer is that there are just four: family, vocation, community, and faith, with these provisos: Community can embrace people who are scattered geographically. Vocation can include avocations or causes. It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four domains, nor do I array them in a hierarchy. I merely assert that these four are all there are. The stuff of life occurs within those four domains. — Charles Murray

I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, or enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence. They will be happy when they get married, when they get a better job, when they get the house paid for, when they get the children through college, when they have completed some task or won some victory. Invariably, they are disappointed. — Maxwell Maltz

Happy is the man who has learned the causes of things. — Virgil

Happiness arises as a result of different causes and conditions. If you harm someone out of anger, you may feel some superficial satisfaction, but deep down you know it was wrong. Your confidence will be undermined. However, if you have an altruistic attitude, you'll feel comfortable and confident in the presence of others. — Dalai Lama XIV

We can bring peace in the world, not by eliminating violence in the world, but by finding the causes of violence and by preventing those from infecting the society. — Debasish Mridha

When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men's souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals. — Winston Churchill

of yourself and of other people. If you wish to attain to lasting happiness you must be ready to hate father, mother, even your own life and to take leave of all your possessions. How? Not by renouncing them or giving them up because what you give up violently you are forever bound to. But rather by seeing them for the nightmare they are; and then, whether you keep them or not, they will have lost their grip over you, their power to hurt you, and you will be out of your dream at last, out of your darkness, your fear, your unhappiness. So spend some time seeing each of the things you cling to for what it really is, a nightmare that causes you excitement and pleasure on the one hand but also worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear, unhappiness on the other. — Anthony De Mello

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. ... I am not aware of any other factor in medicine - not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery - that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes. — Brian L. Weiss

We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being, gradually becoming more aware of what causes happiness as well as what causes distress. — Pema Chodron

A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends. — James Monroe

It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite. — Aristotle.

Success can also cause misery. The trick is not to be surprised when you discover it doesn't bring you all the happiness and answers you thought it would. — Prince

They Whatever can make life truly happy is absolutely good in its own right because it cannot be warped into evil From whence then comes error In that while all men wish for a happy life they mistake the means for the thing itself and while they fancy themselves in pursuit of it they are flying from it for when the sum of happiness consists in solid tranquillity and an unembarrassed confidence therein they are ever collecting causes of disquiet and not only carry burthens but drag them painfully along through the rugged and deceitful path of life so that they still withdraw themselves from the good effect proposed the more pains they take the more business they have upon their hands instead of advancing they are retrograde and as it happens in a labyrinth their very speed puzzles and confounds them — Seneca.

Some say it should come easy if it's real love but that's just not true. Love is never easy - love hurts sometimes. It causes insecurities and jealousies. Relationships take work - love takes work. And happiness requires forgiving others. I forgive you. — A.D. Justice

In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons. — Benjamin Rush

It is a fact that one man can be deliriously happy in the exact situation that causes another man to wither from depression. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Cicero said that gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. If that's true, then my happiness does not cause me to be grateful for what I have. My gratitude for what I have causes me to be happy. Gratitude births the virtue of happiness. — Jennifer Dukes Lee

Within the framework of the Buddhist Path, reflecting on suffering has tremendous importance because -realizing the nature of suffering, you will develop greater resolve to put an end to the causes of suffering and the unwholesome deeds which lead to suffering. And it will increase your enthusiasm for engaging in the wholesome actions and deeds which lead to happiness and joy. — Dalai Lama

Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment of worthy causes. — Norman Vincent Peale

I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now. — Peter McWilliams

Whenever we practise meditation, whether or not our meditation is clear, we are performing a virtuous mental action that is a cause of our future happiness and peace of mind. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

Everything is unfolding based on causes and conditions. Our happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment. If we cling now, we suffer later. If we let go and respond with compassion or friendliness, we create happiness and well-being for the future. — Noah Levine