Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,159,190 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Happiness

Love Friendship Happiness Hope Fear Courage Death Life Time War Peace Freedom Truth Wisdom Knowledge Science Art Music Nature Money Work Power God Beauty Laughter Family Success and failure Change Dreams Books and reading

“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is to have a little string onto which things will attach themselves.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Monday 20 April 1925
“I'm no fucking Buddhist But this is enlightenment The less room you give me (Happiness) The more space I've got It doesn't scare me at all”
Björk (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, I never wish that. I don't intend to die till I've enjoyed my life. Everyone has a right to happiness and sooner or later I will have it. Youth, health and freedom were meant to be enjoyed and I want to try every pleasure before I am too old to enjoy them.”
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) said by 1888 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In vain she told herself that he was unworthy any woman's trust and love, still the unconquerable sentiment that once made her happiness now remained to become her torment.”
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) said by 1888 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because in spite of this longing, I know that I shall purchase happiness at high price if I return; that new falsehood may betray me, new tyranny oppress me, and above all I feel that with this man I must lose more and more the love of all good things, so strong is his influence, so unprincipled his nature. My only hope is that I may save his soul and yet not lose my own. Can I, dare I do this?”
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) said by 1888 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a sin to covet glory I am the most offending soul alive.”
Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) first seen 1800 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his mistress, Lady Hamilton (1800) ; derived from "But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive." by William Shakespeare, in Henry V
“The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Limbo (1920), "Cynthia
“Beauty for some provides escape, Who gain a happiness in eyeing The gorgeous buttocks of the ape Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is like coke — something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There will be real happiness, peace of mind and balance, when living by heart and right-mindedly.”
Stephen Covey (1932–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence—to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) said by 1926 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)
“Young people -it is obvious -cannot achieve such a relationship, but they can, if they understand their life properly, grow up slowly to such happiness and prepare themselves for it. They must not forget, when they love, that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love- must learn love, and that like all learning wants peace, patience, and composure.”
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
“There is a Precious Mountain Even the Seven Treasures cannot compare A cold moon rises through the pines Layer upon layer of bright clouds How many towering peaks? How many wandering miles? The valley streams run clear Happiness forever!”
Hanshan (born 800) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.”
Willa Cather (1873–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and hold fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.”
Willa Cather (1873–1947) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. 13 (10 September 1902)
“Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.”
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there's not much deserving about the matter.”
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.”
William James (1842–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can be married and bored, or single and lonely. Ain't no happiness nowhere.”
Chris Rock (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out — you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”
Henry James (1843–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is having a loving, close knit family in another city.”
George Burns (1896–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 251
“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd like for them to say he took a few cups of love, he took one tablespoon of patience, teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, one pinch of concern, and then, he mix willingness with happiness, he added lots of faith, and he stired it up well, then he spreads it over his span of a lifetime, and he served it to each and every deserving person he met.”
Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So, a man who is really earnest must begin with himself, he must be passively aware of all his thoughts, feelings and actions. Again, this is not a matter of time. There is no end to self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New Delhi India 1st Public Talk (14 November 1948)
“For the gods have very sharp ears for boasts, or for declarations of happiness and self-satisfaction, or for assertions of a firm intention to do this or that, or for statements that this or that must surely happen, or any other words hinting that a man is in the slightest control of his own destiny. And the gods are jealous, easily angered, perverse, and swift to thwart.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.”
Jack Vance (1916–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can have your choice of men but I could never love again He's the only one for me Jolene I have to have this talk with you My happiness depends on you and whatever You decide to do Jolene...”
Dolly Parton (1946–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only the unhappy are churlish in deportment.”
Christopher Morley (1890–1957) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Where the Blue Begins (1922)
“She's one of those people who flinch from the very idea of happiness — in her mind nothing could be more boring or bourgeois.”
J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this [live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth].”
Plato (429–349 BC) said by 349 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Clov: When I fall I'll weep for happiness.”
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Krapp: Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now.”
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These persons all have two souls, two beings within them. There is God and the devil in them; the mother's blood and the father's; the capacity for happiness and the capacity for suffering; and in just such a state of enmity and entanglement towards and within each other as were the wolf and man in Harry.”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose.”
William Cowper (1731–1800) said by 1800 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jubal Harshaw" in the first edition (1961); the later 1991 "Uncut" edition didn't have this line, because it was one Heinlein had added when he went through and trimmed the originally submitted manuscript on which the "…
“Happiness,” Jubal stated, “lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We take just one vow, to safeguard the welfare and happiness of all our children. That’s our total marriage contract. The rest is just poetic ritual.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Colombians! My last wish is for the happiness of the patria. If my death contributes to the end of partisanship and the consolidation of the union, I shall be lowered in peace into my grave.”
Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Final proclamation to the people of Colombia (8 December 1830), as quoted in Man of Glory : Simón Bolívar (1939) by Thomas Rourke
“Their excitement was dampened by a genuine concern for their daughter’s safety and personal happiness, though they are certainly as puzzled how this is to be achieved as any other set of parents.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One’s career might depend solely on one’s own efforts, but marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion. Perhaps it was just as well. If people were too sensible, the human race might well come to an end. Evolution favored the maximum production of children, not of happiness.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And that was just how it worked, wasn’t it? Happiness handed around and around, never stopping. It wasn’t something one could hoard tight like a miser. That would be like trying to hold one’s breath for later.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source