Don't Worry, Be Happy: 100+ Quotes About Happiness That You'll Keep Revisiting

Happiness is a lot like a revolving door. It comes and goes and as Donovan said, “happiness runs in a circular motion.” Sometimes our bad times seem to outweigh the good but if you remember that it always comes back around, you’ll be OK. Being a mama is not easy and some days are harder than others. So if you’re looking for support or soothing words about joy and happiness, we’ve gathered the perfect list to center you and give you a smile.

Everyone has their off-days. Maybe it’s the unfortunately ever-present mom guilt, or perhaps you’re finding the work/kids juggling game harder than usual lately. It’s alright, we’ve all been there. While it would be great to always feel great about life, it’s not that easy. Sometimes we need a little pick-me-up, and these quotes may be just what you’re looking for. Here are 101 “be happy” quotes that will brighten your day.

Interested in more quotes that embody your emotions. We have quote pages for sadness, honesty, motivation, and more.

1. “Happiness is being content with what you have, living in freedom and liberty, having a good family life and good friends.” — Divyanka Tripathi
2. “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.” — L.M. Montgomery
3. “Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
4. “If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.” — Edith Wharton
5. “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” — Mark Twain
6. “People should find happiness in the little things, like family.” — Amanda Bynes
7. “There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.” — Freya Stark
8. “In my life I’ve learned that true happiness comes from giving. Helping others along the way makes you evaluate who you are. I think that love is what we’re all searching for. I haven’t come across anyone who didn’t become a better person through love.” — Marla Gibbs
9. “Whoever is happy will make others happy.” — Anne Frank
10. “There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human—in not having to be just happy or just sad — in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.” — C. JoyBell C.
11. “No medicine cures what happiness cannot.” — Gabriel García Márquez
12. “Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.” — Colette
13. “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” — Abraham Lincoln
14. “Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.” — George Bernard Shaw

1. “Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.” — Alain De Botton
2. “Happiness is a well-balanced combination of love, labour, and luck.” — Mary Wilson Little
3. “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” — George Sand
4. “Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want.”– Alan Cohen
5. “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” — George Burns
6. “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.” — Albert Camus
7. “How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and there will never be a time when it is not now.” — Gerald Jampolsky
8. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer
9. “Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.” — Gretta Brooker Palmer
10. “Happiness is the experience of loving life. Being happy is being in love with that momentary experience. And love is looking at someone or even something and seeing the absolute best in him/her or it. Love is happiness with what you see. So love and happiness really are the same thing…just expressed differently.” — Robert McPhillips
11. “Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” — Margaret Lee Runbeck
12. “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” — Andrew Carnegie
13. “Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” — Guillaume Apollinaire
14. “As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.” — Andrew Delbanco
15. “Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world. Don’t go through life creaking.” — H.W. Byles
16. “Happiness is an inside job.” — William Arthur Ward
17. “Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.” — Robertson Davies
18. “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” — Aristotle
19. “Family, friends, a good laugh and beautiful weather are the best cures.” — Bar Refaeli
20. “Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other. When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack.” — Hazelmarie Elliott
21. “All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.” — Baruch Spinoza
22. “True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” — Helen Keller

1. “Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.” — Benjamin Franklin
2. “You can only have bliss if you don’t chase it.” — Henepola Gunaratana
3. “A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.” — Bernard de Fontenelle
4. ““Happiness is a form of courage.” — Holbrook Jackson
5. “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
6. “All happiness depends on courage and work.” — Honoré de Balzac
7. “To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.” — Buddha
8. “The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.” — Carrie Jones
9. “Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.” — Hosea Ballou
10. “Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.” — Channing Pollock
11. “Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.” — Immanuel Kant
12. “Happiness is the default state. It’s what’s there when you remove the sense that something is missing in life.” — Naval Ravikant
13. “There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.” — Charlotte Bronte
14. “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.” — Chinese proverbRelated: 100+ Eckhart Tolle Quotes That Will Seriously Enlighten You
15. “Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.” — Iris Murdoch
16. “Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.” — Cynthia Nelms
17. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” — Omar Khayyam
18. “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” — Dalai Lama
19. “Happiness is where we find it, but very rarely where we seek it.” — J. Petit Senn
20. “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” — Logan Pearsall Smith
21. “Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.” — Mildred Barthel
22. “Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.” — Pat Conroy
23. People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat – that’s the only moral they know.” — Dany Laferrière
24. “Happiness is distraction from the human tragedy.” — J.M. Reinoso
25. “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
26. “Real happiness is not of temporary enjoyment, but is so interwoven with the future that it blesses for ever.” — James Lendall Basford
27. “I think the key to life is just being a happy person, and happiness will bring you success.” — Diego Val
28. “Happiness is a direction, not a place.” — Sydney J. Harris
29. “Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne
30. “Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.” — Don Marquis
31. “The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.” — Doug Larson
32. “Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.” — Douglas Jerrold
33. “Happiness is always the serendipitous result of looking for something else.” — Dr. Idel Dreimer
34. “Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.” — E.L. Konigsburg
35. “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” — Jane Austen
36. “Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.” — Sri Chinmoy
37. “Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.” — Earl Nightingale
38. “Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
39. “The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.” — Epictetus
40. “Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.” — John Stuart Mill
41. “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.” — Eric Hoffer
42. “Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.” — William Feather
43. “My family didn’t have a lot of money, and I’m grateful for that. Money is the longest route to happiness.” — Evangeline Lilly
44. “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” — Jonathan Safran Foer
45. “Happiness is a place between too much and too little.” — Finnish proverb
46. “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
47. “We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.” — Frederick Keonig
48. “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust
49. “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” — James Oppenheim
50. “In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness – otherwise how would you know when you’re happy?” — Leslie Caron
51. “Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.” — Mignon McLaughlin
52. “Happiness is only real when shared.” — Jon Krakauer
53. “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.” — Marcus Aurelius
54. “You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes.” — Lauren Oliver
55. “Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” — Joseph Addison
56. “The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.” — Joseph Roux
57. “If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you.” — Lao Tzu
58. “If you want to be happy, be.” — Leo Tolstoy
59. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” — Mahatma Gandhi
60. “Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.” — Maxim Gorky
61. “Happiness is the natural flower of duty.” — Phillips Brooks
62. “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.” — Robert Frost
63. “The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
64. “The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.” — William Saroyan
65. “Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.” — Thomas Jefferson
66. “Happiness comes from peace. Peace comes from indifference.” — Naval Ravikant

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