happiness and joy

The best way to cheer yourself
is to try to cheer someone else up.

— Mark Twain

Before you put on a frown,
make absolutely sure
there are no smiles available.

— Jim Beggs

Happiness is not a station you arrive at,
but a manner of traveling.

— Margaret Lee Runbeck

The really happy person
is one who can enjoy the scenery
when on a detour.

— unknown

Happiness is not a destination.
It is a method of life.

— Burton Hills

Happiness is like jam.
You can’t spread it out
without getting some on you.

— Julie A. Peters

When one door of happiness closes,
another opens;
but often we look so long at the closed door
that we do not see the one
which has opened for us.

— Helen Keller

Happiness is not having what you want.
It’s wanting what you have.

— Norman Lear

Nobody really cares if you’re miserable,
so you might as well be happy.

— Cynthia Nelms

Men can only be happy
when they do not assume
that the object of life is happiness.

— George Orwell

If only we’d stop trying to be happy
we could have a pretty good time.

— Edith Wharton

Learn to laugh at your troubles
and you’ll never run out of things to laugh at.

— Lyn Karol

If you want others to be happy,
practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, 
practice compassion.

— The Dalai Lama  

To find something you can enjoy
is far better than finding
something you can possess.

— Glenn Holm

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover,
is he entitled to happiness?

— Stanislaw Lec

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living,
it’s a way of looking at life
through the wrong end of a telescope.
Which is what I do, and that enables you
to laugh at life’s realities.

— Dr. Theodore Dreissel ( Dr. Suess )

People take different roads
seeking fulfillment and happiness.
Just because they’re not on your road
doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

— H. Jackson Browne

Smile,
it is the key that fits the lock
of everybody’s heart.

— Anthony J. D’Angelo

All who would win joy, must share it;
happiness was born a twin.

— Lord Byron

Derive happiness in oneself
from a good day’s work,
from illuminating the fog
that surrounds us.

— Henri Matisse

If you smile when no one else is around,
you really mean it.

— Andy Rooney

The grand essentials of happiness are:
something to do,
something to love,
and something to hope for.

— Allan K. Chalmers

People are just as happy
as they make up their minds to be.

— Abraham Lincoln

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued,
is always beyond our grasp, but which,
if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sometimes your joy
is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile
can be the source of your joy.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

We find greatest joy, not in getting,
but in expressing what we are…
Men do not really live for honors or for pay;
their gladness is not the taking and holding,
but in doing, the striving, the building, the living.
It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught.
It is good to get justice, but better to do it;
fun to have things but more to make them.
The happy man is he who lives the life of love,
not for the honors it may bring,
but for the life itself.

— R.J. Baughan 

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.

— Helen Keller

Happiness comes of the capacity
to feel deeply,
to enjoy simply,
to think freely,
to risk life,
to be needed.

— Storm Jameson

Life is made up of small pleasures.
Happiness is made up of those tiny successes.
The big ones come too infrequently.
And if you don’t collect all these tiny successes,
the big ones don’t really mean much.

— Norman Lear

Did you know…
that when you walk past a flower,
whether it be in somebody’s garden
or on a vacant hillside,
the flower will always smile at you.
The most polite way to respond,
I’ve been told, is to cheerfully
return the smile.

— Ron Atchison

There can be no happiness
if the things we believe in
are different from the things we do.

— Freya Stark

If ignorance is bliss,
why aren’t more people happy?

— unknown