Quotes about Happiness

In other words, in all my rejoicing over all the good things that God has made, God himself is the heart of my joy, the gladness of my joy. In all my rejoicing in everything, there is a central rejoicing in God. Every joy that does not have God as its central gladness is a hollow joy and in the end will burst like a bubble. This is what led Augustine to pray, "He loves thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for thy sake."2

We are kidding ourselves when we romanticize death as the climax of a life well lived. It is an enemy. It cuts us off from all the wonderful pleasures of this world. We call death sweet names only as the lesser of evils. The executioner that delivers the coup de grace in our suffering is not the fulfillment of a longing, but the end of hope. The longing of the human heart is to live and to be happy.

People give way to sexual sin because they don't have fullness of joy and gladness in Jesus.

The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval; but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, animals, the garden and the sky) instead.

Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is. C. S. LEWIS Surprised by Joy1

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And? Like ham and eggs? Sometimes you glorify God and sometimes you enjoy Him? Sometimes He gets glory, sometimes you get joy?

God's glory consists much in the fact that He is happy beyond all our imagination.

The strength of our desire is not the measure of the strength of the final pleasure.

The Christian's holiness and happiness in God are not two separate realities. Happiness in God is the essence of holiness.

The fight for joy is the fight to see and believe Christ as more to be desired than the promises of sin.

Doubtless the happiness of the saints in heaven shall be so great, that the very majesty of God shall be exceedingly shown in the greatness, and magnificence, and fullness of their enjoyments and delights.

From the purest principles of reason, as well as from the fountain of revealed truth, he demonstrates that the chief and ultimate end of the Supreme Being, in the works of creation and providence, was the manifestation of his own glory in the highest happiness of his creatures.