He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.
—Doris Lessing
All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.
—Eddie Cantor
Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast—you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
—George Bernard Shaw
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
—Immanuel Hermann Fichte
If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us least live so as to deserve it.
—J. D. Salinger
Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications are not your life.
—James Oppenheim
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
—Jean Houston
At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
—Unknown
Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.
—John Scalzi
I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.
—Rebecca West
Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
—Henrik Ibsen
The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.
—Simone de Beauvoir
As a child, I lived with being punier than other boys in class. The only consolation was my parents' empathy—they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still, all through grammar school, other kids shoved me around.
—James D. Watson
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.
—Samuel Johnson in The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
—Oscar Wilde