Happiness

“The human good proves to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete virtue.”

“When we say that pleasure is the goal, we do not mean the pleasures of the profligate or the pleasures of consumption, as some suppose... but rather the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul.”

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

“Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of refinement say that it is happiness, and hold that living well and doing well to be the same as being happy.”

“Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.”

“Happily we live, we who possess nothing; feeders on joy shall we be, like the radiant gods.”

“With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow — I still have joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honours acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.”

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. ... The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

“Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and a decline in reported happiness.”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

“Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, far the greatest is the possession of friendship.”

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”

“Positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources.”

“Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.”

“Happiness comes from between. It comes from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself.”

“The ages of refinement are both the happiest and most virtuous.”

“Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”

“The concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept that although every human being wishes to attain it, he can still never say determinately and in a manner consistent with himself what he really wishes and wills.”

“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”

“A substantial portion of our happiness — a full 40 percent — is within our power to change.”

“Think of what you have rather than 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.”

“Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification.”

“We should have wife, children, goods, and, above all, health — but we must not bind ourselves to them so strongly that our happiness depends on them.”

“What is happiness? The feeling that power increases — that a resistance has been overcome.”

“The happy are happy by the possession of good things.”

“The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life.”

“All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is really and essentially always negative only, and never positive.”

“I used to think that the topic of positive psychology was happiness, that the gold standard for measuring happiness was life satisfaction, and that the goal of positive psychology was to increase life satisfaction. I now think that the topic of positive psychology is well-being, that the gold standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing.”

“A happy life is one that is in harmony with its own nature.”

“No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”

“The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”

“It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

“Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”

“For this reason we call pleasure the beginning and the end of the blessed life. For we recognize it as the first and natural good, and from it we begin every choice and avoidance. We return to it, judging every good by the standard of pleasure as our criterion. And because this is the first and innate good, for this reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures when greater discomfort follows for us.”

“In all adversity of fortune, the most wretched kind is once to have been happy.”

“Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold, the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.”

“Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“Contemplation is the highest activity of the human soul, and the one that brings the most perfect happiness.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”

“Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. Therefore, the wise man fears neither life nor death.”

“Happiness is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing, and these qualities are not separated as the Delian inscription suggests.”