Quotes about Happiness

Live a life of love, especially the love of God, and observe the joy of it. Live a life of lovelessness and observe the joylessness of it.

Only when there is virtue in souls can there be peace and happiness in society.

Furthermore, the most popular modern answer to the question of what it means to be a good person is to be kind. Do not make other people suffer. If it doesn't hurt anyone, it's O.K. By this standard, God is not good it he lets us suffer. But by ancient standards, God might be good even though he lets us suffer, if he does it for the sake of the greater end of happiness, perfection of life and character and soul, that is, self.

the will can obey the passions instead of the reason, and this accounts for the fact that we often know what is good and what is evil—even what is good for us, what is truly best for us, for our own ultimate happiness—and yet choose evil over good, choose what we know is not in our own best interests. We can choose misery over joy if our will, led by our passions, commands our mind to focus on the short-range pleasures and ignore the long-run miseries.

When the worldly toys in which we foolishly place our hopes for happiness are taken away from us, our foolishness is also taken away, and this brings us closer to true happiness, which is not in worldly things but in wisdom.

No happiness on earth can be deeper than the happiness that comes from our willing and active submission to God's will even when he wills suffering.

For everything naturally desires good

If the unhappiness of the wicked angels comes at length to an end, the happiness of the good will also come to an end, which is inadmissible.

Happiness can get boring, because it is the satisfaction of our desires, and we know what we desire. (Can you desire what you do not know?) Joy never gets boring because it transcends our desires and surprises them with gifts.

Greed for the things money can buy ("natural wealth") is a bad thing, but it is finite. You can only enjoy a finite amount of food or drink, houses or cars, or even sex. But greed for money ("artificial wealth") is infinite. You can always want more. It's like a drug: you have to have higher and higher doses of it to give you the same "buzz" you used to get from little bits of it. And this never stops. It is Hell's false infinite.

It also works the other way around: the more you love any person (human or divine), the more you want to know him (or Him) better, and the more you do. And this always causes deep joy.

However, when once perfect happiness has been attained, nothing will remain to be desired because then there will be full enjoyment of God