I know that there is nothing better for men
than to be happy and do good while they live.

Ecclesiastes 3:12
"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."

Samuel Adams, US brewer, patriot, and politician in American Revolution, (1722-1803)

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."

Samuel Adams

"The people are most credulous when they are most happy."

Walter Bagehot

"The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do."

Sir James M. Barrie

"Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary.  They valued liberty both as an end and as a means.  They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."

Louis D. Brandeis
 
"All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin."

George Gordon Noel Byron
"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
"Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source -- from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives."

John Dickinson, signed the Constitution and a member of the Continental Congress 1766 Source: An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados, 1766

"Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable."

Anatole France

"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Benjamin Franklin

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."

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

Ira Gershwin
"Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness."

Andre Gide 
"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 greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

Victor Hugo
 
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting 
the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

Thomas Jefferson
"Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk 
life, to be needed."

Storm Jameson
"It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality."

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
 
"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 (1915-1978)
"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, (1864-1955) US Army General, US Army Chief of Staff during the final year of WWI
 
"Ask yourself if you are happy, and you cease to be."

John Stuart Mill
"Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think."

Alexander Pope
"Let's be grateful for those who give us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our soul bloom."

Marcel Proust
 
"Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is 
why most men are miserable."

Francois De La Rochefoucauld
"It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to 
heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power .. . a man is
happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him."

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of 
the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its 
prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this 
is the highest achievement they can aspire to."

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

Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age."

Booth Tarkington
"Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave.
Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war."

Thucydides
"Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want."

Mark Twain

"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness."

George Washington

"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn."

George Washington

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

Oscar Wilde
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