Happiness quotes to inspire, empower and uplift

Need a quick bit of inspiration to help boost your spirits? A happiness quote or two might be just what you need. I have read through hundreds of happiness quotes, picked the ones that I think are best, then organized them into themes so you can easily find something that connects with you. Enjoy.

1. Actions and happiness
2. Formulas and recipes for happiness
3. Goals and happiness
4. Gratefulness and happiness
5. Helping others, giving, sharing and happiness
6. Kindness and happiness
7. Love, people and happiness
8. Possessions and happiness
9. Thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and happiness
10. Tough times, problems and happiness

1. Actions and happiness

“Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.” – the Dalai Lama

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.” – William James

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – Albert Schweitzer

“The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.” – Ernest Dimnet

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.” – Robert Muller

“Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” – Jim Rohn

“Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.” – Aeschylus

2. Formulas and recipes for happiness

“There is no getting around these essential ingredients: determination, effort and time. These are the real secrets to happiness.” – Howard C. Cutler

“The grand essentials of happiness are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” – Allan K. Chalmers

“Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” – Storm Jameson

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“The way to happiness is: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, give much. Fill your life with love. Do as you would be done by.” – Buddha

“Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.” – Bertrand Russell

3. Goals and happiness

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

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” – Albert Einstein

“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Success is getting and achieving what you want. Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get.” – Bernard Meltzer

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.” – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

“The key to happiness is having dreams; the key to success is making them come true.” – James Allen

“Happiness is a direction not a place.” – Sydney J. Harris

“Happiness is a journey not a destination.” – Ben Sweetland

“Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.” – Burton Hills

“People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.” – H. Jackson Browne

4. Gratefulness and happiness

“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 because we will always want to have something else or something more.” – David Steindl-Rast

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.” – Frederick Keonig

“Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” – Robert Brault

“The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash.” – Author Unknown

“Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have.” – Author Unknown

5. Helping others, giving, sharing and happiness

“Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.” – Buddha

“Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.” – Helen Keller

“Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth… Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.” – John Templeton

“Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.” – Gretta Brooker Palmer

“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

“Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.” – Author Unknown

“Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.” – Chinese Proverb

“Happiness adds and multiplies as we divide it with others.” – A Nielsen

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

“Happiness is like a kiss…you must share it to enjoy it.” – Bernard Meltzer

6. Kindness and happiness

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – the Dalai Lama

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

“Happiness cannot be travelled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.” – Denis Waitley

“Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame — or one that is conducive to loving-kindness.” – Pema Chodron

7. Love, people and happiness

“Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.” – Sydney Smith

“We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.” – the Dalai Lama

“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.” – George Sand

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

“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.” – Anne Frank

“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” – Mark Twain

“Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely, the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit, not because you think someone else wants you to be different.” – Stacey Charter

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

8. Possessions and happiness

“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy that makes happiness.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold. Happiness dwells in the soul.” – Democritus

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.” – Margaret Young

“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.” – Epictetus

9. Thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and happiness

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.” – Dale Carnegie

“Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination to be happy under all outward circumstances.” – J. Donald Walters

“A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.” – Hugh Downs

“Happiness is something that you are and it comes from the way you think.” – Wayne Dyer

“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.” – John Milton

“We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.” – Marcus T Cicero

“Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.” – Sophocles

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.” – Marcel Pagnol

“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.” – Anthony de Mello

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” – Epictetus

“A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.” – Seneca

“Happiness is a function of accepting what is.” – Werner Erhard

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

“Misery is almost always the result of thinking.” – Joseph Joubert

10. Tough times, problems and happiness

“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.” – Helen Keller

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them.” – Jack Brown

“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 which has been opened for us.” – Helen Keller

“The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.” – the Dalai Lama

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” – M. Scott Peck

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” – Albert Ellis

“All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.” – Horace Friess

“The greater part of happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.” – Martha Washington

“One joy scatters a hundred griefs.” – Chinese Proverb

photo of sunset in the mountains by Evgeni Dinev and available from FreeDigitalPhotos.net