For most people it seems that being happy, or simply striving for happiness, is a goal to be relentlessly pursued.
To that end, they will search for anything that can contribute to that aim, including looking for “be happy quotes” online.
However, they may be surprised to find that not everyone has the same perception of happiness as they do. Perhaps it is that happiness is just the state of not being unhappy. And the adage that “money can’t buy you happiness” is not a feeling shared by everyone.
According to Alan Alda, “It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It’s only necessary to be rich.” Or, to put it another way, in a quote attributed to the entertainer, Sophie Tucker, “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.”
But the cynical approach to happiness is not solely connected to money, as our Life Daily research team discovered when they investigated how other people have defined happiness.
Browse our selection – you may be surprised:
1. Lauren Bacall:
Find me a man who’s interesting enough to have dinner with and I’ll be happy.
2. Albert Camus:
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
3. Oscar Wilde:
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
4. Albert Einstein:
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
5. Socrates:
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.
6. Albert Camus:
It’s a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
7. Edith Wharton:
If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.
8. Fran Lebowitz:
As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
9. H. L. Mencken:
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
10. Ann Landers:
The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead.
11. Sam Levenson:
Just try to be happy. Unhappiness starts with wanting to be happier.
12. Gerald Jampolsky:
You can be right or you can be happy.
13. Pamela Anderson:
Making love in the morning got me through morning sickness. I found I could be happy and throw up at the same time.
14. Emm Gryner:
If I never saw another airport again, I’d be happy!
15. Andrew Cuomo:
If I’m breathing in 2016, I’ll be happy.
So, was our selection of “be happy quotes” cynical enough for you?
Maybe you agree with Anna Torv who wrote, “Some people just aren’t meant to be happy.”
Or, perhaps, we can give the final words of ultimate cynicism to the Athenian lawmaker, Solon, who died in 558 BC. He wrote, “No one can be said to be happy until he is dead.”
Do you agree with him? How do you feel about the above 18 quotes? Share your view by using the comments feed below.
