Here are some more of our favourite quotes on happiness. Many explore how to be happy, each offering a different perspective. Finding out how to be happy might seem a simple thing to do, but it's not necessarily the same as being easy. It would have been a simple response for Nelson Mandela to forgive those who'd imprisoned him, but it was not easy. Hopefully these quotes will help ease your way to happiness. And maybe help you to adopt or maintain a positive approach to life. You can find more of our happiness quotes by clicking here.
Happiness is a Laughing Matter
"Keep your face to the sunshine and you will not see the shadows." Helen Keller
"A good laugh is sunshine in a house." Thackeray
"Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness." Adam Smith
"A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune." Andrew Carnegie
"Happiness is a laughing matter." The American Association for Therapy and Humour
"Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference." Buddhist saying
Perhaps the effect of doing something simple is best summed up by this quote on happiness:
"If you could do something that would make people happy, and it would cost you neither money nor time, would you do it? If that same thing made you happy, would you do it? What is this magical thing that will brighten your day and the days of people around you and yet cost you nothing? A smile." David Niven
Happiness is ......Unexpected
"The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy, except that they are so." William Ralph Inge
"Those only are happy … who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way." John Stuart Mill
"Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness is Active
"Happiness consists in activity. It is a running stream, not a stagnant pool." John Mason Good.
"Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment." Mihalyi Csikszentmilhayli
"Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well." Josh Billings
"The journey is the reward." Tao saying
An old Chinese saying:"Happiness is having something to do, something to hope for and someone to love.” As Charles Handy then commented “I plan to be happy.”
"The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach." Lin Yutang
Hope, Gratitude and Forgiveness
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"But we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." The Bible, Romans 5:5
"Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit." Norman Vincent Peale
"Gratitude leads to happiness. Conversely, lack of gratitude is the curse of the unhappy." Konosuke Matsushita
We finish our quotes on happiness with the Mandela quote we hinted at at the start.
"When I walked out of the gate I knew that if I continued to hate these people I was still in prison." Nelson Mandela