The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
~ Sir James M. Barrie

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.
~ Mildred Barthel

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are. Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.
~ R.J. Baughan

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.
~ Arnold Bennett

Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.
~ William John Bennett

When one is happy there is no time to be fatigued; being happy engrosses the whole attention.
~ Edward Frederic Benson

The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
~ Jeremy Bentham

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
~ Ingrid Bergman

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
~ Henri L. Bergson

Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.
~ Ambrose Bierce

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.
~ Josh Billings

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.
~ Josh Billings

The world's literature and folklore are full of stories that point out how futile it can be to seek happiness. Rather, happiness is a blessing that comes to you as you go along; a treasure that you incidentally find.
~ Louis Binstock

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.
~ Hugo Black

The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.
~ Smiley Blanton

Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty to be happy. So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers.
~ John S. Bonnell

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.
~ Daniel Boone

We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die. You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.
~ William Boyd

Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!
~ Amanda Bradley

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, ''Let no one be called happy till his death;'' to which I would add, ''Let no one, till his death be called unhappy.''
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning