Happiness Quotations

I get a lot of pleasure making happiness quote magnets out of recycled K-cups — both because it’s satisfying to find something useful to do with all those used coffee holders, and because I can’t help but feel greater personal happiness reading all these gems.

The quotes below are in no particular order.  I use all but the John Lennon quote (too long) on the magnets.

My favorites are the more lyrical quotes, like those of Hafiz of Persia and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

These seemed like a good illustration for the "perfume" of happiness.

Which ones do you especially like?  Are there others I should add to this collection? I’d love to get your feedback!  Enjoy, starting with this from John Lennon:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy.’  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

“What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.”
–Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.”
–Hafiz of Persia

“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.”
– Barbara de Angelis

“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”
– Albert Einstein

“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”
– George Santayana

“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.”
– Andrew Carnegie

“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
– Buddha

“A multitude of small delights constitute happiness.”
– Charles Baudelaire

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh

“Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.”
– Linus Pauling

“Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy.”
– David Steindl-Rast

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
– Marcel Proust

“Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.”
– James M. Barrie

“There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson

“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I never could be good when I was not happy.”
–Julia Ward Howe

“There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.”
– Peyton Conway March

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
– Carl Jung

“Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
– Norman MacEwan

“The Constitution only guarantees you the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” Aristotle

“How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most people at times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.”  William James

“Happiness does not come automatically.  It is not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortune takes back.  It depends on us alone.   One does not become happy overnight, but with patient labor, day after day.  Happiness is constructed, and that requires effort and time.  In order to become happy, we have to learn how to change ourselves.” — Luca and Francesco Cavalli-Sporza