80+ Happiness and Pleasure Quotes to Inspire Joy, Gratitude, and the Art of Living Well
Happiness and pleasure, while often intertwined, reflect different aspects of fulfillment. Pleasure is the immediate joy brought by experiences that delight the senses, such as good food, laughter, or beautiful sights. Happiness, on the other hand, is a deeper and lasting state of contentment, arising from purpose, meaningful relationships, and inner peace. While pleasure offers momentary satisfaction, happiness sustains us through life’s ups and downs. Together, they remind us to savor life’s joys while seeking a sense of purpose and balance.
- “A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.”
- “Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.”
- “The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.”
- “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
- “I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”
- “One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But… I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”
- “They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”
- “Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!”
- “Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.”
- “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
- “Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.”
- “Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.”
- “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
- “The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.”
- “Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.”
- “The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.”
- “The day of individual happiness has passed.”
- “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
- “To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”
- “When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.”
- “But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.”
- “Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.”
- “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”
- “Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.”
- “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.”
- “Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.”
- “To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.”
- “Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.”
- “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
- “Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.”
- “‘The Lady’s World’ should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.”
- “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
- “It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God’s pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.”
- “Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.”
- “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
- “This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.”
- “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”
- “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”
- “Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”
- “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”
- “There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.”
- “God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.”
- “Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.”
- “Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.”
- “O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.”
- “Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”
- “Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man’s own will.”
- “Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.”
- “The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.”
- “The God of this world is riches, pleasure and pride.”
- “Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.”
- “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.”
- “That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.”
- “Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
- “True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
- “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
- “No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.”
- “No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.”
- “Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
- “Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”
- “Off with you! You’re a happy fellow, for you’ll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that!”
- “I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.”
- “There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.”
- “The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
- “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
- “Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.”
- “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.”
- “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”
- “Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‘our own life’ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‘our own life’ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?”
- “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”
- “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.”
- “It is an amazing feature in the French character that they will let themselves be led away so easily by bad counsels and yet return again so quickly. It is certain that as these people have, out of their misery, treated us so well, we are the more bound to work for their happiness.”
- “In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.”
- “Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”
- “Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
- “Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.”
- “The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
- “We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.”
- “It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.”
- “There is nothing I fear more than waking up without a program that will help me bring a little happiness to those with no resources, those who are poor, illiterate, and ridden with terminal disease.”
- “Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.”
- “Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.”
- “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
- “To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
- “Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plain living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man’s happiness really lies in contentment.”