Averie Woodard

50 Quotes That Will Revolutionize The Way You Think About Happiness

It's not just a matter of getting what you want. 
Heidi Priebe
December 19, 2016
“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”
— Henry Miller, No Title
Tagged: Life, Experience, Interest, Happiness
“Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Joy, Happiness, The Past, Moving On, Change
“I’m going to find a way to be happy, and I’d really love to be happy with you, but if I can’t be happy with you, then I’ll find a way to be happy without you.”
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Tagged: Happiness, Love, Self-Sufficiancy, Being Alone, Alone, Relationships, Self-Worth, Empowering
“Mattering makes us happy.”
— Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling On Happiness
Tagged: Happiness, Mattering, Belonging
“You can’t just hope for happy endings. You have to believe in them. Then do the work, take the risks.”
— Nora Roberts, Dark Witch
Tagged: Happiness, Work, Taking Risks
“Those who wish to sing always find a song.”
— Swedish Proverb, No Title
Tagged: Happiness, Positivity, Optimism, Life, Loving Life
“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”
— Carlos Castaneda, No Title
Tagged: Misery, Happiness, strength, Self-improvement, Self-Help
“Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.”
— John Barrymore, No Title
Tagged: Happiness, Excitment, Life, Loving Life
“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Tagged: Perspective, Happiness, Optimism, Wisdom, Simplicity, Minimalism
“ You were in paradise, but you didn't recognize it. It's the same with most people in this world; they seek suffering in the most joyous of places because they think they are unworthy of happiness.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil And Miss Prym
Tagged: Happiness, Joy, Pain, Suffering, Accepting Happiness, Paradise, Hell
“Happiness is the China shop; love is the bull. ”
— H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Happiness, Destruction
“So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.”
— Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
Tagged: Happiness, Life, Optimism, Cultivating Happiness, Dealing with anxiety, Count Your Blessings
“You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about love. Or about happiness. I’ve talked about becoming - or remaining – the person who can be happy, a lot of the time, without thinking that being happy is what it’s all about. It’s not. It’s about becoming the largest, the most inclusive, most responsive person you can be.”
— Susan Sontag, Vassar Commencement Speech
Tagged: Happiness, Contentment, Openness, Life
“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Happiness, Materialism, Money, The Human Condition
“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Happiness, Being Right, Being Happy, Smart vs. Happy
“The fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.”
— Daniel M. Gilbert, Stumbling On Happiness
Tagged: Happiness, Predicting Happiness
“One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.”
— Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling On Happiness
Tagged: Happiness, Luck, Fortune, Fame
“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Tagged: Life, Happiness, Destruction
“Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor: A Novel
Tagged: Happiness, Boredom, Sin, Religion
“What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Damned
Tagged: Expectations, Happiness, Pain, Suffering, Heaven, Hell
“There was a research article I read with the headline, ‘Love Is A Single Act Committed By Two Brains,’ because of the way oxytocin levels rose in a mother and a son when they hugged. I wish more poets became scientists.”
— Iain Thomas, How to be Happy: Not a Self-Help Book. Seriously.
Tagged: Happiness, Love, Science, Poetry, Poets
“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Tagged: Happiness
“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
Tagged: Happiness, Light, Darkness
“Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.”
— Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting
Tagged: Waiting, Happiness, Unhappiness, Delayed Gratification
“The healthiest response to life is joy.”
— Deepak Chopra, Why Is God Laughing
Tagged: Joy, Life, Happiness, Living, Embracing Life
“Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.”
— Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams
Tagged: Happiness, Joy, Letting Go, Materialism, Attachment
“Happiness is only real when shared.”
— Chris McCandless, Into the Wild
Tagged: Happiness, Love, Relationships, Friendship
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
— Agatha Christie, Autobiography, An
Tagged: Life, Living, Extrovert, Being Alive, Joy, Happiness, Pain
“It’s hard for me to explain this to you in a way that will make one hundo percent sense, but I’ll try. Until recently, maybe in the last year or so, I didn’t understand that life could be good. It wasn’t like I was against happiness. I just didn’t think it was an option for someone like me.”
— Ryan O'Connell, The Twenties We All Deserve
Tagged: Happiness, Life
“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”
— Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be
Tagged: Courage, emotions, vulnerability, Happiness, Joy, Pain, Suffering