For over a thousand years, many people ask, “What is true happiness?” or “How can I truly be happy?”

Even though these questions have already been answered by many wise individuals, there are still many people who have no clue as to what true happiness it.

If you are one of those people searching for true happiness, then maybe this list of true happiness quotes shared by inspirational people can help you find the real happiness you so hardly seek.

65 True Happiness Quotes

1. “True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.” — Bertrand Russell

2. “Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.” — Og Mandino

3. “True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

4. “We should practice by showing one another love and helping one another. It is a mistake to pursue happiness and to seek to the avoid suffering by deceiving and humiliating other people. We must try to achieve happiness and eliminate suffering by being good-hearted and well-behaved.” — The Dalai Lama

5. “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.” — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

6. “Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.” — E. L. Konigsburg

7. “Joy comes not through possession or ownership but through a wise and loving heart.” — Gautama Buddha

8. “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” — Helen Keller

9. “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

10. “When you’re happy for no reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.” — Marci Shimoff

11. “All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.” — Horace Friess

12. “Happiness is a form of courage.” — Holbrook Jackson

13. “The value of a smile… it costs nothing but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters goodwill in a business, and is the countersign of friends.” — Dale Carnegie

14. “A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.” — Hugh Downs

15. “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” — James Oppenheim

16. “When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice.” — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

17. “Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness. Laugh when you can. Apologize when you should and let go of what you can’t change.” — Drake

18. “There are no happier people on this planet than those who decide that they want something, define what they want, get hold of the feeling of it even before its manifestation and then joyously watch the unfolding as, piece by piece by piece, it begins to unfold. That’s the feeling of your hands in the clay.” — Esther Hicks

19. “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” — The Dalai Lama

20. “Happy is the man who can endure the highest and lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.” — Seneca

21. “There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.” — Anthony de Mello

22. “It’s not how much we have, but how much we enjoy that makes happiness.” — Unknown

23. “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” — Abraham Lincoln

24. “The less you want, the richer you are. The more you need in order to be happy, the more miserable you’ll be.” — Yanni

25. “Happiness is wanting what you have.” — Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

26. “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

27. “The really happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery when on a detour.” — Unknown

28. “The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.” — Anne Frank

29. “Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” — Margaret Lee Runbeck

30. “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

31. “How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.” — Mihaly Csikszentmihaly

32. “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

33. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” — Mahatma Gandhi

34. “Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.” — Immanuel Kant

35. “Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.” — Anon

36. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius

37. “Success is how you collect your minutes. You spend millions of minutes to reach one triumph, one moment, and then you spend maybe a thousand minutes enjoying it. If you were unhappy through those millions of minutes, what good is the thousand minutes of triumph? It doesn’t equate… Life is made of small pleasures. Good eye contact over the breakfast table with your wife. A moment of touching a friend. Happiness is made of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. If you don’t have all those zillions of tiny successes, the big ones don’t mean anything.” — Norman Lear

38. “Health is not just the absence of a disease. It’s an inner joyfulness that should be ours all the time; a state of positive well-being.” — Deepak Chopra

39. “Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.” — Mother Teresa

40. “The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.” — The Dalai Lama

41. “If what you call happiness are the pleasurable feelings that you experience when things are going very well in your life, then you truly don’t know what true happiness is.” — Edmond Mbiaka

42. “The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.” — John D. Rockefeller III

43. “You have to believe in happiness, or happiness never comes.” — Douglas Malloch

44. “Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to hunt for happiness.” — William E. Gladstone

45. “Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” — Golda Meir

46. “Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.” — Paramahansa Yogananda

47. “Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being.” — Jean-Yves Leloup

48. “Peace is something like happiness; you cannot say “I will be happy when…” and you can’t say “I will be peaceful when…” Your happiness shouldn’t depend on the situation you’re in nor on the circumstances that surround you. In the same breath, you cannot wait for everything around you to become peaceful in order for you to say, “I am peaceful.” In both happiness and peace, there is a heart of strength, determination and steadfastness; a heart that has the power to make things happen. You have to be at peace. You have to be happy. Now.” — C. JoyBell C.

49. “When you discover true happiness you will find that you are wealthier beyond the dreams of kings.” — Jeffrey Fry

50. “Only those who seek within, get to discover their true unconditional happiness.” — Edmond Mbiaka

51. “Happiness is surrounding yourself only with those who bestow their unconditional love and support.” — Ken Poirot

52. “Every moment that’s ever been, or ever will be, is gone the instant it’s begun. So life is a loss. And the secret of happiness is to learn to love the moment more than you mourn the loss.” — Dan Baker

53. “True happiness can not be achieved through wealth, fame or action, But through love, modesty and self-satisfaction.” — Mouloud Benzadi

54. “Seeking external validation brings disappointment. Validate yourself from within to find true happiness.” — Amy Leigh Mecree

55. “True happiness starts in the core of our true selves as a constant, a guidepost, a default, and a strength that shines from the inside out.” — Elena Marie

56. “If you are looking for true happiness, you have to change your level of consciousness and deepness of awareness.” — Debasish Mridha

57. “Opening a dark box can make you very unhappy! But for the love of truth, never hesitate even a second to open it, because the truth is the way to true happiness!” — Mehmet Murat Ildan

58. “Learn to be your own best friend first then you will find true happiness because happiness is from within.” — Gift Gugu Mona

59. “True Happiness is… to enjoy the Present, without anxious dependence upon the future.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

60. “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

61. “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

62. “The Secret of HAPPINESS is to Admire without Desiring.” — Carl Sandburg

63. “There is only one way to HAPPINESS and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” — Epictetus

64. “True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.” — Joseph Addison

65. “Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give – pleasure, possessions, power – but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy.” — Dada Vaswani

Final Thoughts

Happiness — it is the most important influence and drive in our lives. Yet we have a hard time finding it or maybe we just don’t understand what happiness truly is. We always create efforts in hopes that somehow, we stumble will upon happiness, yet, we are never truly aware when we really have it.

Truthfully, difficult questions bear very simple answers. Happiness starts within us. It always has been. Happiness cannot find a home in a heart that does not understand hope and acceptance. Such a heart cannot recognize happiness when it comes waving.

So, start by changing your heart and thoughts, and happiness will find its way to you.