Happiness / Joy

A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

--Abraham Lincoln

Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.

--Sir Wilfred Grenfell

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.

--Helen Keller

We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

--Juvenal

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

--Sir James Barrie

Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is just beyond your grasp. . .but if you will sit down quietly, may alight on you.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

The foolish person seeks happiness in the distance; the wise person grows it under his feet.

--James Oppenheim

Happiness is the greatest paradox in nature. It can grow in any soil, live under any conditions. It defies environment. It comes from within; it is the revelation of the depths of the inner life as light and heat proclaim the sun from which they radiate. Happiness consists not of having but of being; not of possessing but of enjoying. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness; it is the aroma of a life lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has, he may depend on others; what he is rests on him alone. Happiness is the soul's joy in possession of the intangible. It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself.

--William George Jordan