Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jonathan Swift

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Jonathan Swift

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain and languor; it's like spending this year part of next year's revenue.

Jonathan Swift

If we take an examination of what is understood by happiness ... we shall find all its properties ... under this short definition, that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.

Jonathan Swift

Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

Jonathan Swift

So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?

Jonathan Safran Foer

I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

Jonathan Safran Foer

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

Napoleon Hill

The only thing over which you have complete right of control at all times is your mental attitude.

John Adams

Whether they be old or young, rich or poor, high or low, wise or foolish, ignorant or learned, every individual is seen to be strongly actuated by a desire to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected... a passion for distinction.

John Adams

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Harvey Ball

The catch phrase for the day is 'Do an act of kindness. Help one person smile.'

Harvey Mackay

Happiness can be thought, taught and caught... but not bought.

George Arnold

Twas a jolly old pedagogue, long ago, Tall and slender, and sallow and dry; His form was bent, and his gait was slow, His long thin hair was white as snow, But a wonderful twinkle shone in his eye. And he sang every night as he went to bed, "Let us be happy down here below: The living should live, though the dead be dead." Said the jolly old pedagogue long ago.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

A happy new year to all of you, men and women of every part of the world.

James Anthony Froude

Those who seek for something more than happiness in this world must not complain if happiness is not their portion.

James Anthony Froude

To be happy is not the purpose for which you are placed in this world.

Helen Hunt Jackson

One of Dr. Johnson's ingredients of happiness was, "A little less time than you want." That means always to have so many things you want to see, to have, and to do, that no day is quite long enough for all you think you would like to get done before you go to bed.

Helen Fisher

Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They've never found a society that did not have it.

Helen Fisher

Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.

Helen Fisher

The reason you take antidepressants is to feel calm. And romantic love is not calm -it's elation, it's mood swings, and you're killing all that when you take the drug.

Helen Fisher

Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby.

Helen Fisher

I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Mankind is interdependent, and the happiness of each depends upon the happiness of all, and it is this lesson that humanity has to learn today as the first and the last lesson.

Henepola Gunaratana

You can only have bliss if you don't chase it.

Hector Hugh Munro

He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

Henry David Thoreau

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

Henry David Thoreau

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

Henry David Thoreau

My greatest skill has been to want but little.

Henry David Thoreau

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.