Jodi Picoult Quotes

What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.

The absence of feeling bad isn't enough to make you happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling good

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.

Happiness is a state of mind.

Wise or unwise, who doubts for a moment that contentment is the cause of happiness? Yet the inverse is true: we are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented. Well-regulated minds may be satisfied with a small portion of happiness; none can be happy with a small portion of content.

Would I have been happier? Maybe. But then, happiness was overrated.

Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable.

it's better to be happy...if you can..!!

If by happiness you mean instead an ordinary contentment, then yes - I'm fairly contented. Not satisfied - contented.

[Happiness is] a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.

Because gratitude is the key to happiness, anything that undermines gratitude must undermine happiness. And nothing undermines gratitude as much as expectations. There is an inverse relationship between expectations and gratitude: The more expectations you have, the less gratitude you will have.

Happiness never becomes a habit.

I've come to believe that seeking happiness is not a frivolous pursuit. It's honorable and necessary. And most people forget even to thing about it.

Happiness seems to require a modicum of external prosperity.

Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh?

All I ever wanted to be was happy.

I think I'm as content as one can be.

I think happiness is love.

This is the first time in my life I've ever been happy, not completely happy, but happier than I've ever been.

Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.

Satisfaction is a major player in the happiness stakes.

But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.

I'm happy and I have a great life.

That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.

Joy was more than just an absence of discomfort.