11 Happiness Quotes That Offer Priceless Wisdom & Truth

Welcome back for day 22 of my Happy.Healthy.Whole Project (HHWP)! If you are just joining me, and are curious what the project is all about, or if you’ve been following along but need to catch up on a few days, you can do so here.

One thing you may not know about me is that I tend to be a bit of a quote collector. Whenever I am reading or I hear a quote that I find especially true or meaningful, I write it down in a document on my phone that I keep just for my favorite quotes. 

So for today’s post I thought I’d share some of my favorite happiness quotes with you. I have picked the ones that hold the most wisdom and can shed light on either what happiness truly is, or how we can go about achieving it. Ready?

11 Happiness Quotes That Offer Priceless Wisdom & Truth

I think a lot of people have this misconception that happiness is either something you have or you don’t, and along with that comes an expectation that happiness will just happen on it’s own.

But the reason I like this quote from Craig Weller, is that it reminds us that the things most worth having, the things that bring the most happiness in life, are things we fought for and earned, often through our own blood, sweat, and tears.

Things that come too easily, we often take for granted, whereas, those we worked our butts off for, are hard not to appreciate.

I always love Benjamin Franklin’s quotes. There are two reasons I think that this one in particular holds a lot of wisdom.

First, it tells us that happiness does not come from “Infrequent pieces of good fortune”. To me, this means that happiness is not luck or waiting around for good things to happen now and then. 

Secondly, I like the bit that says, “small improvements to daily life”. What Franklin is telling us here is that we don’t have to make huge, dramatic sweeping changes to our life to become happier. 

Instead, if we focus on improving our daily life – or habits – in small ways, over time, it can make a big difference in our happiness levels and quality of life.

Tal Ben-Shahar is a psychologist and author of the book Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, which I have been reading. I would highly recommend it to anyone that wants to learn more about happiness!

In this quote from the book, Tal Ben-Shahar reminds us of a few very important facts. First, that both our actions and our thoughts play a huge role in how happy we are.

And second, that happiness is a choice, since we are in direct control of both our actions, and our thoughts.

This quote comes back to people’s expectation that happiness is a result of “passive experience of desirable circumstances”, and reminds us that happiness isn’t something that is just going to fall into our laps.

To achieve happiness, according to Myers and Diener, we must instead work towards something that holds value and is meaningful to us. In other words, we must pursue personal growth.

I think Freya makes a really critical point with this quote. In order for us to be happy in our lives, our actions and our beliefs must be in line with each other.

For example, if we value certain qualities, say honesty, courage, and diligence, but our actions are dishonest, cowardly, and lazy – we will be unhappy.

If our actions don’t measure up to our beliefs and values, we are living a lie. To be happy, we must strive for our actions to match our beliefs, which is called “integrity”.

[Related: The Integrity Report: A Big First Step To Loving You For YOU]

This quote holds a very important reminder, which is that happiness is all around us, right now, in the present, if we only stop to look for it.

The reason I chose to include this particular quote is that we are often too focused on the future to enjoy the present.

It is a good thing to have plans and goals and dreams that you are actively working for, but don’t forget to slow down every now and then and appreciate the present and the happiness that can be found there.

In order to be truly happy, we must have a combination of present pleasure, and long-term happiness. If you only focus on the future and forget the now, you’re missing half of the equation.

I have often heard from others that they feel it is selfish to focus on and prioritize their own happiness (or even physical health). But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Research has consistently found that people that are happy are kinder, more helpful, more productive, and overall more successful.

So if your concern is caring for others, make your happiness a priority. It’s like when they give you the talk on the airplane about securing your oxygen mask before helping others with theirs. If you are unconscious, you are of no help to anyone else in the event of an emergency on a plane.

The same is true of happiness. If you don’t prioritize your own happiness, it will be hard to bring happiness to others.

I just recently came across this quote and loved it immediately. For me personally, this quote means that it isn’t always easy to achieve happiness. It can be hard and a little scary to even make the commitment to pursue your own happiness.

You have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone, do some serious self discovery, and seek growth. That can be scary, but it will be worth it.

This is a fantastic quote, and possibly one of my favorites here. I think this quote speaks to the fact that people are very poor judges of what actually makes them happy.

I think the counterfeit happiness this quote refers to is our obsession with money, material things, and prestige or fame.

But the true, and cheap happiness comes from cultivating quality relationships, spending time doing things that we are passionate about, helping others, and pursuing personal growth.

This quote addresses another misconception about happiness, that happiness is the complete absence of all negative feelings and difficulties in our life.

But as they say, there is no light without the dark. In order to be able to appreciate the moments that make us happy, we must also have some that make us unhappy. 

If we are able to deal with the unhappiness and problems that arise, then we can be happy more often than not. Whereas the expectation that we should be happy all of the time, only sets us up for disappointment.

I love how much wisdom is packed into this concise little quote. People often mistake success for happiness. But as Tal Ben-Shahar explains in his book Happier, there is something called the arrival fallacy.

When we are striving for success, we always think that next achievement is the one that will make us happy. But when we arrive at that achievement, we find that it doesn’t, and that now we must seek the next achievement and hope that is the one that will magically make us happy. 

In this arrival fallacy, people get what they want, but it turns out that it doesn’t make them as happy as they thought it would.

This is what I refer to as “the grass is always greener on the other side effect”. But as this quote  tells us, happiness is wanting what you get. This means being grateful for what you have, or realizing that the grass is actually greener where you water it.

Conclusion

So there we have it – 11 of my favorite quotes about happiness that hold meaning about the true nature of happiness, and what it actually takes to achieve it.

Which one was your favorite?

Is there a happiness quote that you would add to this list?

Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you!

Until tomorrow,

~Clarissa

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