To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Happiness doesn't depend on how much you have to enjoy, but how much you enjoy what you have.

If someone has children, the first thing they want is for them to be happy, and then become someone in life and all that. But the educational system, I mean always, not just now, creates competitive, successful people, and does not educate them to be happy. The problem is that success gives money, not happiness. The eternal problem.

Money's a necessary evil, there to give you moments. It gives me things I couldn't have - nice things - but happiness? That's a not a question of money and fame. Quite the opposite.

Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?

I always was a rich person because money's not related to happiness.

I am deeply grateful for the concern of all those who constantly prayed for my happiness.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

I'll never forget the blooming happiness that spread in me like the sun coming up when Lydia's obstetrician poked me awake: 'Congratulations... you have a fine son.'

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.

Genuine happiness comes from within, and often it comes in spontaneous feelings of joy.

The closest synonym of happiness is excitement, and you can generate it by doing something that you can't completely comprehend. This understanding makes the process rich and exciting.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

The single most important factor in our long-term happiness is the relationships we have with our family and close friends.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.

Since, therefore, no man is born without faults, and he is esteemed the best whose errors are the least, let the wise man consider everything human as connected with himself; for in worldly affairs there is no perfect happiness under heaven.

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

Scientifically, happiness is a choice. It is a choice about where your single processor brain will devote its finite resources as you process the world.

Happiness isn't happiness unless there's a violin-playing goat.

No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least. Maybe that's why figuring out who does which chores usually prompts, at best, tense discussion in a household and, at worst, outright fighting.

There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.

I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.