Quotes · Skopia

65 quotes

Thucydides, Funeral Oration, History of the Peloponnesian War · 430 BC

★ 7.5

Novel · Magazine · Modernist literature

He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life.

James Joyce

The Egoist · 1915

★ 7.1

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Walter Benjamin

One Way Street · 1979

★ 6.0

Poem

Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go.

William Blake

1805

★ 5.4

Novel

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea... All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Zorba the Greek · 1946

★ 5.1

Letter

Happiness is the deferred fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth brings so little happiness; money is not an infantile wish.

Sigmund Freud

1898

★ 4.6

Novel

The eternal error men make in imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes.

Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina · 1877

★ 4.0

Autobiography and memoir

Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · 1790

★ 3.9

Novel · Coming of age story

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.9

Novel · Dystopian fiction

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.9

Novel · Post-colonial literature

If you're happy in a dream... does that count?

Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things · 1997

★ 3.9

Play · Tragic play · Greek theater

The happiest life consists in ignorance.

Sophocles

Ajax · 442 BC

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.

Boethius

The Consolation of Philosophy · 523

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

Who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate?

Boethius

The Consolation of Philosophy · 524

★ 3.8

Play · History (play)

My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen. My crown is called content; A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

William Shakespeare

Henry VI, Part 3 · 1595

★ 3.8

Essay

To fill the hour—that is happiness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: Second Series (Emerson) · 1844

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1933

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.

Epictetus

The Enchiridion · 135

★ 3.7

Biography

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by: a good tavern or inn.

Samuel Johnson

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1776

★ 3.7

Poem

Thou hast no right to bliss.

Matthew Arnold

Empedocles on Etna · 1852

★ 3.7

A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor-such is my idea of happiness.

Leo Tolstoy

1859

★ 3.7

Letter

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

George Sand

1862

★ 3.7

Novel

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Willa Cather

My Antonia · 1918

★ 3.7

Film · Biography (film) · Adventure drama (film) · Biography · Adventure drama

Happiness only real when shared.

Chris McCandless

Into the Wild · 2007

★ 3.7

Religious literature

Of all the calamities, all the sufferings, all the terrors of this world, the only principle is the feeling or love of the self: it must be renounced.

Shantideva

700

★ 3.6

Play · Satire

True happinesse Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth, and choice.

Ben Jonson

Cynthia's Revels, or The Fountain of Self-Love · 1600

★ 3.6

Play · Drama (play)

For all the happiness Mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.

John Dryden

1665

★ 3.6

Novel

It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.

W. Somerset Maugham

Of Human Bondage · 1915

★ 3.6

Poem

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Frost

1942

★ 3.6

One loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them.

Masanobu Fukuoka

1975

★ 3.6

You ask if they were happy. This is not a characteristic of a European. To be contented-that's for the cows.

Coco Chanel

1990

★ 3.6

The happiness of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute fractions-the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Improvisatore · 1828

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.

Willa Cather

1902

★ 3.5

Play · Drama (play)

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

George Bernard Shaw

1903

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning · 1946

★ 3.5

True Happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise: it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self; and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Joseph Addison

The Spectator · 1711

★ 3.5

Newspaper

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Carl Jung

The Times of London · 1960

★ 3.5

Novel

I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close · 2005

★ 3.5

The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Arthur Schopenhauer

What a Man Is · 1851

★ 2.9

Play

To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

Henrik Ibsen

Ghosts · 1881

★ 2.8

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