Quotes about Happiness

You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.

Happiness is a hard master - particularly other people's happiness.

everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else...

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. Whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth or beauty that mattered. Happiness has got to be paid for. It hasn't been very good for truth of course. But it's been very good for happiness.

He had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop.

Happiness is a hard master- particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth.

The right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.

When captured and brought to trial, many of those who had taken part in the Sabbath resolutely refused, even under torture, even at the stake, to abjure the religion which had brought them so much happiness.

That is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do.

The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma.

That is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny. You can't consume much if you sit still and read books. If one is different, one is bound to be lonely. Beauty is attractive and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.

And that,' put in the Director sententiously, 'that is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.