Happiness, as a word, has become sort of equated with these smiling images on television, selling some nice cream or food product or something. It's seen a bit as being a stupid consumer.
All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition.
When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.
Being charitable provides a boost to your psyche that is tough to replicate in any other way. But note that although any charity will happily take your money, you can give in other ways and still reap the same happiness reward. Volunteering and donating your old or unused belongings have the same result.
Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.
Years of happiness can be lost in the foolish gratification of a momentary desire for pleasure.
My faith helps me understand that circumstances don't dictate my happiness, my inner peace.
Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that's a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful.
I'm just living each day, and I'm better equipped to do so. I mean, I used to be totally afraid, I used to have, like, permanent stage fright. But now I'm trying to have fun. I'm trying to bring as much happiness to as many people as possible.
Respect your partner. Be happy in your partner's happiness.
I think I am missing a gene that most people have to enable them to feel happiness about success and these kind of things.
Happiness statistics may be most valuable in smaller, local discussions. Understanding how different sorts of programs affect the well-being of citizens would be enormously helpful to a mayor choosing between building a new bridge or offering a tax cut.
While television is a good servant, it's a bad master. It can swallow up huge quantities of our lives without much happiness bang for the buck.
There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
I really believe that being flexible and grateful contributes a lot to your happiness, which contributes to your health and contributes to your look.
Year after year, the Nobel Awards bring a moment of happiness not only to the recipients, not only to colleagues and friends of the recipients, but even to strangers.
Sometimes I feel like crying, tears of happiness, tears of joy, to see the distance we've come and the progress we've made.
We need to have intimate, enduring bonds; we need to be able to confide; we need to feel that we belong; we need to be able to get support, and just as important for happiness, to give support. We need many kinds of relationships; for one thing, we need friends.
There's always a sense of tragedy with icons. It happened to both the Princess of Wales and Diana Dors. A lot of people had grown up with them, and everybody loved them. Then, when they had at last found happiness, they were taken in the most dreadful way.
An actor's body should be full of emotions, whether it is happiness or sorrow, pain or joy, enraged or elated.
Humans are extremely good in acquiring new power, but they are not very good in translating this power into greater happiness, which is why we are far more powerful than ever before but we don't seem to be much happier.
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of common man.
I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion, and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.
Working hard is a great way to impact the world, to learn, to grow, to feel accomplished, and sometimes even to find happiness, but it becomes a problem when you do so at the expense of the people closest to you.
One can make no better investment than the cultivation of a taste for the beautiful, for it will bring rainbow hues and enduring joys to the whole life. It will not only greatly increase one's capacity for happiness, but also one's efficiency.
The Bourbon King was first ambassador of reason and human happiness.
The biggest problem is the funerals that don't exist. People call the funeral home, they pick up the body, they mail the ashes to you, no grief, no happiness, no remembrance, no nothing. That happens more often than it doesn't in the United States.
I would say to anyone starting out that if their priority in life is happiness, then don't be a musician.
Happiness will come from materialism, not from meaning.
Voting has not been tough for me, for the most part, because there's guideposts about what will bring about the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people.
Perfect happiness is knowing that everyone I love is healthy, safe, and content.
I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness.
People say you make your best work when you're in despair and all that, and at your lowest - but for me, I think happiness makes you positive, and I think that's a good creative place to write from.
I have always said that human beings are multidimensional beings. Their happiness comes from many sources, not, as our current economic framework assumes, just from making money.
One way to express choice is through the market. Well-functioning markets provide choices and, ultimately, the ability to express one's pursuit for happiness.
Those who know me know I'm passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.
