Life Celebration Quotes
Crafted with the reader in mind, this collection is clearly divided by themes:
Alan Watts
[When] dancing. You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room, that’s where you should arrive, the whole point of dancing is the dance.
Look at the people who live to retire, put those savings away; and then when they’re 65 they don’t have any energy left, more or less impotent; they go and rot in an old people’s senior citizen’s community because we’ve simply simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line.
We thought of life by analogy, with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end; and the thing was to get to that end, success or maybe heaven after you’re dead.
But, we missed the point the whole way along, it was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
Albert Camus
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
Albert Einstein
I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care about money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. I claim credit for nothing. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.
Aristotle
Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
A man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something that he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbour with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he is happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.
Betrand Russell
The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.
Bob Marley
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
Charles Baudelaire
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.
But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.
Confucius
One joy dispels a hundred cares.
Eckhart Tolle
The important thing to realize is the world is not here to make me happy. When you don’t demand that the situation, or place, or person should make you happy, then actually the situation, place, or person is quite satisfying.
Epictetus
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
Hold, unhappy man, be not swept along with your impressions! Great is the struggle, divine the task; the prize is a kingdom, freedom, serenity, peace.
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
Epicurus
Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.
Georgia O'Keefe
I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary - you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.
Jack Kerouac
Happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.
John Stuart Mill
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
Lao Tzu
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Leo Tolstoy
If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.
Leonard Cohen
I’m a closet optimist.
Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Marcus Aurelius
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.
Oscar Wilde
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Pablo Picasso
Caring about the happiness of others, we find our own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
René Descartes
My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented.
Socrates
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.
Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, stiff, search or struggle. Just be.
Why not keep this resource at your fingertips?
Other Voices
For these sections without caricature the quote comes first, the cited person after. In case you are using text-to-speech be aware.
Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.
Aeschylus
Happiness comes from within. It is not dependent on external things or on other people. You become vulnerable and can be easily hurt when your feelings of security and happiness depend on the behavior and actions of other people. Never give your power to anyone else.
Brian Weiss
Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.
Chuang Tzu
Begin each day with optimism and end each day with forgiveness. Happiness in life begins and ends within your heart.
Doe Zantamata
Contentment, and indeed usefulness, comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great humilities - of not trying to make ourselves this or that, but of surrendering ourselves to the fullness of life - of letting life flow throng us.
David Grayson
Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.
Doris Mortman
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
ee cummings
Happiness is to be outside, to walk, to look, to amalgamate with things. Sitting down, you fall victim to the worst of yourself. Man was not created to be nailed to a chair.
Emil Cioran
Rules for happiness; something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.
Immanuel Kant
I wish everyone could get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that's not the answer.
Jim Carrey
Often it is those people who live quietly, modestly, and contentedly with a simple life who are the happiest.
Joshua Becker
More than whimsy, joy is a weapon we use to fight life's battles.
Margaret Feinberg
The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead.
Mr. Peanutbutter
People think they would be happy if they went to live somewhere else, but it doesn’t work that way, because wherever you go you will take yourself.
Neil Gaiman
Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.
Ovid
I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make worth being born, myself a human being.
Pearl S. Buck
It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.
Rabindranath Tagore
Beware of Destination Addiction – a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job and with the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.
Robert Holden, Ph.D.
Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Don’t wait for things to get easier, simpler, better. Life will always be complicated. Learn to be happy right now. Otherwise, you will run out of time.
Unknown
