Basics about Happiness

Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.

Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.

Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want.

Life is a journey, and if you fall in love with the journey, you will be in love forever.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you.

Everything is a gift of the universe - even joy, anger, jealously, frustration, or separateness. Everything is perfect either for our growth or our enjoyment.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

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

Tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are.

For me it is sufficient to have a corner by my hearth, a book, and a friend, and a nap undisturbed by creditors or grief.

You cannot judge what should bring others joy, and others cannot judge what should bring you joy.

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than growing with them.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

If you start to think the problem is 'out there,' stop yourself. That thought is the problem.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

In our lives, change is unavoidable, loss is unavoidable. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change, lies our happiness and freedom.

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.

You never regret being kind.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving.

The need for forgiveness is an illusion. There is nothing to forgive.

Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.

Reflect upon you present blessings, of which every man has many--not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

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. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.

Happiness is not having what you want. It is appreciating what you have.

True happiness... arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

We can have peace if we let go of wanting to change the past and wanting to control the future.

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Money doesn't bring happiness and creativity. Your creativity and happiness brings money.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I am not bound to win, I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have.

There is no stress in the world, only people thinking stressful thoughts and then acting on them.

We all get report cards in many different ways, but the real excitement of what you're doing is in the doing of it. It's not what you're gonna get in the end--it's not the final curtain--it's really in the doing it, and loving what you're doing.

In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.

Success at the highest level comes down to one question: Can you decide that your happiness can come from someone else's success?

There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.

Once you do something you love, you never have to work again.

Anything in life that we don't accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it.

The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Do what you have always done and you'll get what you have always got.

The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment.

We avoid the things that we're afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover.

Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.

Happiness is where we find it, but very rarely where we seek it.

To be content means that you realize you contain what you seek.

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.

You are responsible for your life. You can't keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on.

Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs--even though checkered by failure--than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time...serenity, that nothing is.