Quotes about Happiness

Thoughtful minds make little use of this expression: the happy and the unhappy. In this world, clearly a vestibule of another, no one is happy.

The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved--loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one's neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: 'All is vanity.' I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps.

Their own destiny is a far-off thing to them ... One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, and yet is hardly conscious of it one's self. It always ends, it is true, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In the meantime, it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we look on at the game with indifference.

There is still a certain grace in a dead festival. It has been happy.

The goodness of the mother is written on the gaiety of the child.

I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then.

It is a charming quality of the happiness we inspire in others that, far from being diminished like a reflection, it comes back to us enhanced.

The circumstances of happiness are not enough, there must also be peace of mind

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness! He who has not viewed the things of this world and the heart of man under this double light has seen nothing and knows nothing of the true.

When Cosette went out with him, she leaned on his arm, proud, happy, her heart full to overflowing. Jean