100+ Best Happiness Quotes to Inspire Joy in Your Life

Feeling overwhelmed? Try reading these 100 inspirational happiness quotes certain to bring more joy to your life.

We’ve got short, quippy quotes, quotes about love, funny quotes, and plenty of inspirational sayings and phrases to keep you motivated.

Use them to create simple DIY artwork for your home, as inspirational phrases for homemade greeting cards, daily motivation in your bullet journal, or just as a quick pick-me-up when you need a reason to smile.

And while you’re here, don’t forget to download your free motivational art prints, so you can always remember to keep up that positive outlook.

Short Happiness Quotes

I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.

~ Paul Simon

Happiness is realizing that nothing is too important.

~ Antonio Gala

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”

~ Phyllis Diller

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

~ Sophocles

Happiness is a habit—cultivate it.

~ Elbert Hubbard

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

~ Sydney J. Harris

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”

~ Voltaire

Being nice is one of many bridges on the road to happiness.

~ Donna A. Favors

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

~ Dr. Seuss

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

~ Mildred Barthel

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

~ Mark Twain

Remember this, that very little is needed to make a happy life.

~ Marcus Aurelius

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

~ Lord Byron

Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.

~ Mark Twain

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

~ William Thackeray

Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live

~ Johnny Depp

Quotes About Love

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

~ George Sand

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

~ Arthur Rubinstein

A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy.

~ Saint Teresa of Calcutta

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

~ Allan K. Chalmers

Love like you’ve never been hurt because every 60 seconds you spend angry or upset is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back…

~ Unknown

Count your age by friends not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

~ John Lennon

Happiness is when your mind is thinking through your heart.

~ Judi Singleton

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Funny Quotes About Happiness

Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot little puppies

~ Gene Hill

If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.

~ Edith Wharton

Beer is proof that God loves us & wants us to be happy

~ Benjamin Franklin

Happiness? That’s nothing more than a good health and a poor memory.

~ Albert Schweitzer

It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.

~ Lucille Ball

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.

~ John Gunther

Quotes to Inspire a Good Attitude

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

~ Charles H. Spurgeon

“The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.”

~ Martha Washington

Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

~ Groucho Marx

Happiness is the best makeup

~ Drew Barrymore

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

~ Herman Cain

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

~ Denis Waitley

It’s not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

~ Agnes Repplier

Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.

~ Aeschylus

Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you have decided to look beyond the imperfections.

~ Unknown

Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination to be happy under all outward circumstances.

~ J. Donald Walters

What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.

~ French Proverb

Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway”

~ Emory Austin

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

~ Helen Keller

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

~ Dale Carnegie

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Happiness is largely a matter of self-hypnotism. You can think yourself happy or you can think yourself miserable.

~ Dorothy Dix

If you want to be happy, value and cherish every little thing in life, even the small things. Everything and every second in life is valuable and precious to our own existence, happiness and self-worth.

~ Brandon Hofer

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.

~ Francesca Reigler

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.

~ Oprah Winfrey

You must try to generate happiness within yourself. If you aren’t happy in one place, chances are you won’t be happy anyplace.

~ Ernie Banks

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.”

~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Quotes About Being Good to Each Other

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up

~ Albert Einstein

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.

~ Dolly Parton

Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.

~ Unknown

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

~ Buddha

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.

~ Saint Teresa of Calcutta

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.

~ Peyton Conway March

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

~ Ira Gershwin

The habit of being uniformly considerate toward others will bring increased happiness to you

~ Grenville Kleiser

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.

~ Charles L. Morgan

“Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”

~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

I believe… that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Nobody can take away your pain, so don’t let anyone take away your happiness.

~ Unknown

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

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Quotes for Motivation and Inspiration

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

~ Epictetus

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

~ Albert Einstein

Some believe in destiny some believe in fate, but I believe that happiness is something we create.

~ Sugarland

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

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.

~ John Cleese

Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.

~ Johnny Carson

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Happiness is a Swedish sunset -it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.

~ Mark Twain

Happiness, not another place, but this place…not for another hour, but for this hour.

~ Walt Whitman

Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.

~ Albus Dumbledore

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action

~ Benjamin Disraeli

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

~ Benjamin Franklin

There is the happiness which comes from  creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.

~ Henry Miller

If you can’t find joy in the path you are on and what you are working toward now, how do you expect to find joy once you get there?

~ Unknown

More Quotes to Inspire Joy

May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.

~ Irish Blessing

As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul.

~ Jewish Proverb

If you would not be laughed at, be the first to laugh at yourself.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

Be happy. Talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours…never doubt the excellence and permanence of what is yet to be.

~ Helen Keller

May brooks and trees and singing hills join in the chorus too, and every gentle wind that blows send happiness to you.

~ Irish Blessing

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.

~ Ashley Montagu

It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.

~ Margaret Bonnano

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

~ Guillaume Apollinaire

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

~ Benjamin Franklin

It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed.

~ Kin Hubbard

It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.”

~ Katherine Mansfield

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

~ Albert Camus

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

~ Charles Dickens

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

In the pursuit of happiness, the difficulty lies in knowing when you have caught up.

~ R. H. Grenville

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

~ G.K. Chesterton

From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.

~ Dr. Seuss

A smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around.

~ Carolyn Birmingham

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

~ James Oppenheim

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.” ~ John Lubbock

~ John Lubbock

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

~ Herman Hesse

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This post was originally published on May 20, 2016. It has been updated with additional quotes, for better readability, and with improved artwork.