Quotes about Happiness

We fear that this moment will end, that we won't get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

I had a very happy childhood. I was lucky to grow up surrounded by nature and animals, to be outside all the time, and to work on a big farm with my dad.

There are no simple congruities in life or history. The cult of happiness erroneously assumes them.

We may reconcile ourselves to the world at our peril, but it will never reconcile itself to us. . . . This unwillingness to die, doth actually impeach us of high treason against the Lord : is it not a choosing of earth before him ; and taking these present things for our happiness, and consequently asking them our very God (469)?

If our rest was here, most of God's providences must be useless. Should God lose the glory of his church's miraculous deliverances, and of the fall of his enemies, that men may have their happiness here?

God has made the desire of our own happiness so necessary to the soul of man, that it cannot be separated from our desire to please him. Therefore, both in respect to God, and to our own happiness, "we must believe that he is the everlasting Rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart;

It's not easy having a good time! Even smiling makes my face ache!

Because I am a part of the Big Picture, I do matter and substantially so. Because I am only a part, however, I am rightly situated off to stage right—and happily so. What freedom there is in such truth! We are inherently important and included, yet not burdened with manufacturing or sustaining that private importance. Our dignity is given by God, and we are freed from ourselves!

So get ready for a great adventure, the one you were really born for. If we never get to our little bit of heaven, our life does not make much sense, and we have created our own "hell." So get ready for some new freedom, some dangerous permission, some hope from nowhere, some unexpected happiness, some stumbling stones, some radical grace, and some new and pressing responsibility for yourself and for our suffering world.

Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now.

To know the Lord and his ways," as the Jewish prophets put it,250 has very little to do with intelligence and very much to do with a wonderful mixture of confidence and surrender. People who live in this way tend to be the calmest and happiest people I know. They draw their life from the inside out.