Every tear has a smile behind it.
Iranian (on adversity)
Happiness is a state of mind.
unknown
Happiness isn’t a goal, it’s a by
uct. – Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Happy is as happy does.
unknown
He who laughs last, laughs best.
Aesop (c.620-560 BC)
If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.
unknown
Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Chaucer (c.1343-1400)
People should take time to be happy.
Grandma Moses (1860-1961)
Sorrow doesn’t kill, reckless joy does.
Yoruba (West African (on joy and sorrow)
Sorrow is to the soul, as worm is to wood.
Turkish (on joy and sorrow)
The more the merrier.
John Heywood (c.1497-1580)
The person who gets stuck on petty happiness, will not attain great happiness.
Tibetan (on joy and sorrow)
Virtue and happiness are mother and daughter.
Ben Franklin (1706-1790)
They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
Tomm Bodett
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
Nicolas Chamfort
Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness – the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.
Sean O’Casey
To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
Mark Twain
Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
Rumi
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
Marianne Williamson
Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
Joseph Campbell
We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
Buddha
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
Christopher McCandless
Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.
Greg Anderson
The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.
Jim Rohn
I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace – a connection to what matters.
Oprah Winfrey
When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness – all the good things.
Maya Angelou
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.
RJ Baughan
If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.
Chinese Proverb
The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts: and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
Montaigne
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.
Storm Jameson
We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.
Carlos Castaneda
Resolve to keep happy and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Helen Keller
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
Henri Nouwen
Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
Leo Tolstoy
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
Henry Ward Beecher
Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.
Christian Nestell Bovee
If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.
John Templeton
When we are centered in joy, we attain our wisdom.
Marianne Williamson
You have to sniff out joy. Keep your nose to the joy trail.
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
Richard Wagner
Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.
Jean Paul Richter
The only joy in the world is to begin.
Cesare Pavese
Short is the joy that guilty pleasure brings.
Euripedes
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
Joy is not a commodity to be hoarded and protected. It is like a muscle. It must be used daily to keep strong and vigorous.
Laura Moncur
The joy of a spirit is the measure of its power.
Ninon de Lenclos
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t’were his own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.
Mahatma Gandhi
People come and go, pain comes and goes. But so does joy. And if our hearts are closed because we don’t want to suffer, they won’t be open enough to recognize the joy as it flies by.
Geneen Roth
Optimists find joy in small things. They enjoy sunsets, a good conversation with a close friend; and they enjoy life in general. They are more concerned with having many small joys rather than having one huge joy.
Robert M. Sherfield
