If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it. Epictetus
Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. William Blake
Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified? Chuck Palahniuk
A man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and prosperous being and happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer of the man with his surroundings. James Allen
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts. Samuel Johnson
Imagination disposes of everything it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world. Blaise Pascal
Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. William S. Burroughs
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult. Samuel Johnson
Happiness is a how not a what. A talent, not an object. Hermann Hesse
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. Immanuel Kant
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. Ambrose Bierce
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment. J. Donald Walters
It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. Thomas Carlyle
When you're passionate about something, you want it to be all it can be. But in the endgame of life, I fundamentally believe the key to happiness is letting go of that idea of perfection. Debra Messing
The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency. Quentin Crisp
The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done. Thomas Carlyle
We're taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they're of equal value to happiness, excitement and inspiration. Alanis Morissette
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted. George Santayana
Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. Saint Augustine