Tao Te Ching
Godfer/Dreamstime
Happiness
Almost everyone wants happiness more than almost everything else; but, most of us, most of the time undermine our true happiness chasing false gods of pleasure that quickly dissolve into pain. Advertising firms recruit top psychologists to learn how to best manipulate their customers into believing that if they only buy this or that product, they will find happiness. They assume (almost always correctly) that, by the time the customers discover the falseness of their claims, they will be too busy chasing after a new claim to complain much about the one that just failed them. And the faster and more energetically we chase after all these false hopes of happiness, the more we miss the true happiness that’s always here, right with us.
Confused and distorted views about the sources of happiness devolve into corruptions like nepotism as idiot compassion. We think we’re expressing our love and family loyalty by elevating them to a post or position above their natural and acquired talent. They may temporarily gain a little fame and fortune but they won’t be happy and they won’t do a good job. They lose their happiness from doing what they love as well as the satisfaction from successfully and beneficially accomplishing a task. And then the organization/country/family also loses both because of the incompetence and from the lack of inspiration.
Quotes (136)
“Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are, it solely relies on what you think.”
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought… if we speak or act with a pure thought, happiness follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
“Until he is dead, keep the word ‘happy’ in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky.”
“Happiness does not come from fame, riches, or virtue. It only arises when posterity—reflecting on our life—believes it to be a life they would wish to live.”
“Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good life, he is happiest.”
“The man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life.”
“Happiness appears to consist in leisure... the free exercise of any power, whatever it may be, is happiness.”
“If we are content with whatever happens and follow the flow, joy and sorrow cannot affect us. This is what the ancients called freedom from bondage.”
“Lao-tzu said everyone else seeks happiness. He alone saw that to be incomplete was to become whole.”
“The happiest men are they who have arrived at the point of having nothing to fear.”
“We cannot enjoy full happiness, untroubled by suffering unless we realize the nature of things.”
“When happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it.”
“Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole life, by far the most important is friendship... the chief concerns of the right-minded person are wisdom and friendship of which the former is a mortal benefit, the latter an immortal one.”
“The world is what we make it and all happiness and suffering is self-created. Why continuously make more and more unnecessary problems?”
“The first to apologize is the bravest, the first to forgive is the strongest, the first to forget is the happiest.”
“We believe that success is the key to happiness but in truth happiness is the key to success.”
“Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own: he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.”
“Show me a man who—though sick, is happy; who—though in danger, is happy and I'll show you a Stoic.”
“It is impossible to deny the good of life to any order of living things… Those that deny the happy life to plants are really denying it to all living things.”
“The phenomenal appearance of empty space transcends pleasure into pure joy and happiness.”
“How miraculous and wondrous, hauling water and carrying firewood!”
“When kings do not act out of happiness and anger, their punishments and rewards will not be excessive, nor will metal weapons and leather armor arise.”
“The Five Joys:
1. Long life
2. Wealth
3. Health—soundness of body, serenity of mind
4. Love of Integrity
5. An end crowning the life”
“Happiness follows sadness just as day follows night;
The glow of dawn guides us out of the dark of night.”
“If thou and I be sitting in the wilderness, —
that would be a joy to which no sultan can set bounds.”
“All of a man’s happiness is in his being the master of his ego, while all his suffering is in his ego being his master.”
“If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty.”
“Happiness comes from wanting others to be happy, suffering from only wanting happiness for ourselves.”
“Like a dream, our actions seem to not be very meaningful or important; but, they bring about all the variety of happiness and suffering.”
“Love may turn into an inordinate clinging to the love object, compassion can turn into sentimentality and a feeling of helplessness, joy can turn into a feeling of elation and over-excitement that gets lost in unrealistic goals, but equanimity brings us back to solid ground. It’s still vulnerable to apathy but this is countered by love completing the cycle.”
“Those who are content with little live day by day and treat any day like a feast day.”
“The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.”
“What greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?”
“The first great rule of life - to put up with things – is half of all wisdom… We often have to put up with the most from those on whom we most depend… Out of patience comes forth peace, the priceless boon that is the happilness of the world.”
“With great wealth endless worries quickly come and peace of mind quickly leave. You become a target of envy and you don’t know if people are only pretending to like you for an advantage. Fears of theft and robbery arise. What chance is there for enjoying life?”
“Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God”
“Why should we build our happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
“Don't wait around for your life to happen to you. Find something that makes you happy, and do it. Because everything else is all just background noise.”
“If you feel unhappy, place yourself above that and act so that your happiness is not dependent on anything.”
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."”
“Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery?”
“The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest happiness in using it.”
“The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.”
“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses joy as it flies by
Will live in eternity's sunrise.”
“The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits ... is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature”
“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”
“The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him – in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society and the like so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.”
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
“the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”
“All suffering comes from desiring happiness for oneself.”
“You could construe abandoning all hope of results as being to your welfare. For example fame, renown, comfort, and happiness in this life, later happiness among gods or men, even the desire to achieve the transcendence of misery itself.”
“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
“Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.”
“men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I have done God's will on earth.'”
“Life will bring you many misfortunes, but it is precisely in them you will find your happiness”
“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.”
“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”
“On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.”
“On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.”
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
“The secret of happiness is this: let your interest be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons who interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.”
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
“Even a happy life cannot cannot be without a measure of darkness. And the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
“'O lovely Bird, tell me, where can one find happiness?'... 'Happiness, my friend, is in every thing, valley, and mountain, flower, and gem.'”
“When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home, that is happiness.”
“The law of the dignity of human personality beyond castes and outer distinctions creates a continuous rainbow of joy for humanity.”
“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.”
“Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”
“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition.”
“The basic reality in life is not politics, nor industry, but human relationships—the associations of a man with a woman... the family is greater than the State, devotion and despair sink deeper into the heart than economic strife, in the end our happiness lies not in possessions, place, or power, but in the gift and return of love.”
“Then, for no reason, all would suddenly be changed, and I felt a great, inexplicable joy, a joy so powerful that I could not restrain it but had to beak into song, a mighty song, with only room for one word: joy, joy! And then in the midst of such a fit of mysterious and overwhelming delight I became a shaman not knowing myself how it came about. I could see and hear in a totally different way.”
“Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody's happy.”
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
“Of all the unhappy people in the world,the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do.”
“As long as we invent and progress in mechanical things and not in love, we shall not achieve happiness.”
“Remember, all of man's happiness is in the little valleys. Tiny little ones. Small enough to call from one side to the other.”
“What matters most are the simple pleasures so abundant that we can all enjoy them...Happiness doesn't lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes.”
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”
“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”
“to express yourself freely as you are is the most important thing to make yourself happy, and to make others happy.”
“Happiness must happen, it 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”
“Happiness is indeed a Eurydice, vanishing as soon as gazed upon. It can exist only in acceptance, and succumbs as soon as it is laid claim to.”
“To wish happiness for others, even for those who want to do us harm, is the source of consummate happiness.”
“Bliss and radiance occur of themselves when the mind is tranquil.”
“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the effort to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized.”
“How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? People work at dying, they don't work at living.”
“My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness”
“Happiness is the 'up-up-up.' Joy is the peace in what is... When we understand practice as being okay with what is, that leads to joy. Joy is what's going on, minus our opinion about it.”
“For real happiness, for real lasting stable happiness, one has to make a journey deep within oneself and see that one gets rid of all the unhappiness and misery stored in the deeper levels of the mind.”
“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
“The most important thing is to enjoy your life - to be happy - it's all that matters.”
“You go back. You search for what made you happy when you were smaller. We are all grown up children, really... So one should go back and search for what was loved and found to be real.”
“The path to true happiness is the same whoever, whenever, or wherever you are.”
“The little Angels of the trees and flowers. They offered to unlock my mind… till every fiber Of my soul was bathed in harmony.”
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
“every painful feeling is caused by a prior thought... the only thing that an interrupt happiness is an untrue thought.”
“Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.”
“The percentage of Americans who considered themselves happy peaked in 1957, although consumption has more than doubled since then... The fact that we in the developed world are now consuming so much more does not seem to be having much effect on our level of contentment.”
“Happiness is a flimsy premise upon which to base one’s life... If enlightenment were merely happiness, then it too could be discarded when something better comes along.”
“Imagine feeling completely satisfied and content with your life just as it is.”
“Protestant ideals in the 16th and 17th centuries.. abolished carnivals and festivities, while thousands of laws were introduce to ban fairs and dances, sports and theater... happiness was not to be enjoyed in this life but was rather a reward granted by God to true believers in the next”
“True wisdom is free of the dramas of culture or religion and should bring us only a sense of peace and happiness.”
“There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness… the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit… we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction.”
“The lie that happiness is about borrowing money you haven’t got to buy crap you don’t need”
“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”
“Happiness and unhappiness are not primarily created by the material world or the physical body. First and foremost, they are decisions of the mind… The quickest route to happiness is to help others.”
“Happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.”
“Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings.”
“Think about what happens when we think that we must do something to achieve or possess something else […] the intolerance of what is not leads to unhappiness”
“The one resource we are all seeking, all the time—happiness—is unlimited, renewable, and most certainly increases when it is shared. When we truly and fully experience the truth of that fact, everything changes.”
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