Can you choose to be happy in this moment?
Would you say you have a happy life?
After many years of coaching people to reach their happiness goals and having written hundreds of articles on how to be happy, I’ve discovered that happiness boils down to a few essentials.
First, happiness is a state of being that you can choose.
It is a choice about how you want to live your life, in spite of difficulties and pain.
Also, happiness can only be appreciated in the present moment.
You can’t sustain happiness while dwelling in the past or future.
And finally, happiness requires connection with others — sharing our happiness and doing things to make others happy.
If you type the phrase “choose happiness” into your favorite search bar, you will see millions of search results.
It has been written about by ancient philosophers and is still the topic of many current bestselling books.
Want a little happiness inspiration for yourself? Decide to choose your own happiness.
115 I Choose Happiness Quotes to Guide Your Life:
1. “When you get up in the morning, you have two choices – either to be happy or to be unhappy. Just choose to be happy.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale
2. “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” ~Mark Twain
5. “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” ~Berke Breathed
7. “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~Dalai Lama
8. “The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.” ~Doug Larson
9. “There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
10. “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
11. “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton
12. “Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.” ~Iris Murdoch
13. “My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.” ~Thornton Wilder
14. “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
15. “Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” ~Joseph Addison
16. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
17. “But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?” ~Albert Camus
18. “Find a place where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” ~Joseph Campbell
19. “If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day.” ~W. Beran Wolfe
20. “Happiness is your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.” ~Johnny Carson
21. “For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” ~Author Unknown
22. “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
23. “The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” ~Ashley Montagu
24. “One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.” ~Iris Murdoch
25. “I wake up every morning with a great desire to live joyfully.” ~Anna Howard Shaw
26. “It is only possible to live happily ever after on a daily basis.” ~Margaret Bonanno
28. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~Marcel Proust
29. “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.” ~James Openheim
30. “Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” ~Ayn Rand
31. “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” ~Jonathan Safran Foer
32. “Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world. Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!” ~Calvin & Hobbes
33. “Happy people do not demand a lot from the world because their happiness proceeds from a place deeper than the world can touch.” ~Alan Cohen
34. “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'” ~Kurt Vonnegut
35. “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” ~Albert Einstein
36. “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 that has been opened for us.” ~Helen Keller
37. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts; therefore guard accordingly.” ~Marcus Aurelius
38. “People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest.” ~George Matthew Allen
39. “The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, , and the countless other infinitesimal of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.” ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge
40. “I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life, than on the nature of those events themselves.” ~Baron Alexander von Humboldt
41. “Happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature; it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool.” ~John M. Good
42. “The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.” ~Lin Yutang
43. “People who are not happy with themselves cannot possibly be happy with you.” ~Unknown
44. “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You must fight for it, strive for it, and insist upon it.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert
45. “Be positive. Stay happy and don’t let the negativity of the world get you down.” ~Germany Kent
46. “I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.” ~Drew Barrymore
47. “One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” ~Unknown
48. “With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself, or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.” ~Wayne Dyer
49. “Don’t put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket.” ~Unknown
50. “Saying yes to happiness means learning to say no to things and people that stress you out.” ~Thelma Davis
51. “People wait all week for Friday, all year for summer, all life for happiness.” ~Unknown
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52. “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” ~Steve Furtick
53. “When you are happy, you can forgive a great deal.” ~Princess Diana
54. “If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” ~Roald Dahl
56. “Remember the five simple rules to be happy: Free your heart from hatred. Free your mind from worries. Live simply. Give more. Expect less.” ~Unknown
57. “Most importantly, keep smiling. Because life is a beautiful thing, and there’s so much to smile about.” ~Marilyn Monroe
60. “If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow.” ~Buddha
61. “The Constitution only guarantees you the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” ~Benjamin Franklin
62. “If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.” ~Bertrand Russell
63. “Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling, enduring, and accomplishing.” ~George Sheehan
64. “Happiness is a habit – cultivate it.” ~Elbert Hubbard
65. “Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth … Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.” ~John Templeton
66. “Whether your life is happy or not is your own choice.” ~Nick Vujicic
67. “Think of all the beauty thats still left in and around you and be happy!” ~Anne Frank
68. “Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.” ~Scottish Proverb
69. “Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.” ~Robert Anthony
70. “People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.” ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
71. “Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.” ~Charles Caleb Colton
73. “When I meet people from other cultures I know that they too want happiness and do not want suffering, this allows me to see them as brothers and sisters.” ~Dalai Lama
74. “Remember that happiness is a way of travel — not a destination.” ~Roy M. Goodman
75. “He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.” ~Johann von Goethe
76. “Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.” ~Bertrand Russell
77. “A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.” ~George Santayana
78. “If you let go a little you will have a little happiness. If you let go a lot you will have a lot of happiness. If you let go completely you will be free.” ~Ajahn Chah
79. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha
80. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” ~Omar Khayyam
81. “There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.” ~Peace Pilgrim
82. “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” ~Abraham Lincoln
83. “There is no waiting for happiness. It’s now or never. I choose NOW.” ~Zia Holte
84. “Happiness held is the seed. Happiness shared is the flower.” ~John Harrigan
86. “Happiness blooms naturally in the hearts of those who are inwardly free. It flows spontaneously, like a mountain spring after April showers, in minds that are contented with simple living.” ~Paramhansa Yogananda
87. “Happiness is like a plant: It must be watered daily with giving thoughts and actions.” ~Swami Kriyananda
88. “There are souls in this world who have the gift of finding joy everywhere and leaving it behind them when they go.” ~ Faber
89. “An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.” ~ Maurice Masterlinck
90. “The first recipe of happiness — avoid too lengthy meditations on the past.” ~ Andre Maurois
91. “Make one person happy each day and in forty years you will have made 14,600 human beings happy for a little time at least.” ~ Charles Wiley
92. “When you finally allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it, you will find you dance with everything.” ~ Emanuel
93. “The aim of life is to live and to live means to be aware — joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” ~Henry Miller
94. “Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.” ~Joseph Addison
95. “The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty. It is the real joy of living.” Walter Rauschbusch
96. “Happiness is good health and a bad memory.” ~Ingrid Bergman
97. “Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself for he shall never cease to be entertained.” ~John Boswell
98. “Nothing has to happen for me to feel good! I feel good because I’m alive! Life is a gift, and I revel in it.” ~Tony Robbins
99. “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.” ~Oscar Wilde
100. “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
101. “It was only a sunny smile and little it cost in the giving but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.” ~George Sand
102. “The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.” ~Marcel Pagnol
103. “Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself — no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are — completely; the good and the bad — and make changes as YOU see fit — not because you think someone else wants you to be different.” ~Stacey Charter
104. “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
105. “Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!” ~Friedrich Nietzsche
106. “Some pursue happiness – others create it.” ~Helen Rowland
107. “Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.” ~Eckhart Tolle
108. “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” ~Albert Ellis
109. “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” ~Epictetus
110. “To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness.” ~Mary Stuart
111. “How you choose to feel today should not be dependent on others.” ~Anthon St. Maarten
112. “A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.” ~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
113. “The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” ~Victor Hugo
114. “Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” ~Frank Tyger
115. ““If you want to be happy, be.” ~Leo Tolstoy
Choosing happiness is a subject we never tire of dissecting and a state of mind we must choose every day.
What are some of your favorite quotes about choosing happiness?
