“The purpose of our lives is to be happy,” said the Dalai Lama XIV. Most of us would not think this way. Instead, we may think that the purpose of our lives is to achieve our life goals for respect, fulfillment, money and/or fame, which will then make us happy. However, we can choose to be happy at any time by changing our outlook, our state of mind.
In the Dalai Lama’s book The Art of Happiness he says, “We don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the perfect mate―right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.” He explains that feeling genuine happiness requires bringing about a transformation in your outlook or way of thinking. To do this, he says, we first must learn how negative emotions and behaviors are harmful to us and how positive emotions are helpful. Then we become “determined to cherish, develop, and increase those positive emotions no matter what.” This change, to increase positive emotions and thoughts, is our choice, and it takes time, but with practice and discipline it is possible. Here are 25 happiness quotes to help change your state of mind and increase your happiness:
1. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” ~Helen Keller
2. “The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.” ~Andre Maurois
3. “Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness.” ~Buddha
4. “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” ~Abraham Lincoln
5. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
6. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~Marcel Proust
7. “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.” ~Lucille Ball
8. “Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.” ~Andy Rooney
9. “Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.” ~Dalai Lama XIV
10. “Happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give.” ~Benjamin Carson
11. “The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.” ~J.M. Barrie
12. “Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity…When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.” ~Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project
13. “Some people appear to be happy, but they simply don’t give the matter much thought. Others make plans: I’m going to have a husband, a home, two children, a house in the country. As long as they’re busy doing that, they’re like bulls looking for the bullfighter: they react instinctively, they blunder on, with no idea where the target is. They get their car, sometimes they even get a Ferrari, and they think that’s the meaning of life, and they never question it. Yet their eyes betray the sadness that even they don’t know they carry in their soul. Are you happy?” ~Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
14. “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
15. “Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.” ~Dale Carnegie
16. “Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” ~Norman MacEwan
17. “The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.” ~Martha Washington
18. “All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.” ~Horace Friess
19. “Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” ~Margaret Lee Runbeck
20. “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self- gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” ~Helen Keller
21. “To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy . . . is to set our own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
22. “To live long and achieve happiness, cultivate the art of radiating happiness.” ~Malcolm Forbes
23. “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
24. “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” ~George Burns
25. “Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” ~Groucho Marx
Which happiness quote resonates the most with you?
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