Quotes to inspire and reflect

Unhappy is the man, though he rule the world, who doesn’t consider himself supremely blest.

A merry heart goes all the day, / Your sad tires in a mile-a.

Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering—from positive evil.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happ'iness.

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that others not be.

There are many roads / to happiness, if the gods assent.

When [man] is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn t analyze it, just as if happiness were his right.

There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.

Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.

A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't.

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.

He is happy that knoweth not himself to be otherwise.

What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.

Of mortals there is no one who is happy. / If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps / Luckier than one’s neighbor, but still not happy.

Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.

To fill the hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.

True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.

Happiness depends, as Nature shows, / Less on exterior things than most suppose.

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

The right to happiness is fundamental: / Men live so little time and die alone.

When we are not rich enough to be able to purchase happiness, we must not approach too near and gaze on it in shop windows.

A man’s happiness,—to do the things proper to man.

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

’Tis not the beard that makes the philosopher.

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady’s headdress: within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees.

Laws are never as effective as habits.

It is not in novelty but in habit that we find the greatest pleasure.

Habit creates the appearance of justice; progress has no greater enemy than habit.

The evolution from happiness to habit is one of death’s best weapons.

Man like every other animal is by nature indolent. If nothing spurs him on, then he will hardly think, and will behave from habit like an automaton.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

Nothing more unqualifies a man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

Each of us when he appears before his fellows is clothed in a certain dignity. But every man knows what unconfessable things pass within the secrecy of his own heart.

Where guilt is, rage and courage doth abound.

This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.

He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before accusation.

We are all exceptional cases.... Each man insists on being innocent, even if it means accusing the whole human race, and heaven.

Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression.

There may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones.

Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.