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
To fill the hour - that is happiness - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for - Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist, poet, statesman
There is not one form of happiness: there are myriads of them. Each human being must find his particular form of happiness from his nature, his environment and the vast diversity of society. You might find happiness in God, in a garden, in a workshop, in a laboratory, in service to others, in the present, in the past or in the future - Robert Muller
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself - Henry David Thoreau
There is no happiness except in the realisation that we have accomplished something - Henry Ford
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty to be happy - Robert Louis Stevenson
There is an infinity of good ideas and actions available in us humans. Our good doing can be concentrated on the self, on the family, the neighbourhood, the city, the province, the nations, but it can also be a whole continent, the whole humanity, the whole planet Earth. All of this is vastly open to us. I myself was led to love and work for the whole humanity and our whole wonderful Earth in the United Nations and I was recompensed with the most astonishing, unpredictable, happy life - Robert Muller
There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe, and Japan. What is going on? http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0141016906,00.html
There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning - Christopher Morely