Ben Harper Quotes

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

In our world, we have this huge focus on vicarious living - politicians, movie stars, athletes, coaches, all these people. What our research has shown very clearly is that people who are really happier and have more meaningful lives are people that focus on living their own lives.

Instead of always asking how to get others to approve of you... learn to ask: What do I really want, the applause of the crowds or to quietly have my own life?

You can't be happy by doing something groovy.

The real duty of man is not to extend his power or multiply his wealth beyond his needs, but to enrich and enjoy his imperishable possession: his soul.

Actual happiness is sometimes confused with the pursuit of it; and the most mindless and crass how-tos can get jumbled in with the modestly useful, the appealingly personal, and the genuinely interesting.

Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I'm alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.

You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.

Eventually, we reach the point where we start to realize that we are not going to find peace, contentment, happiness, strength, fearlessness - all of the things that in our heart of hearts we wish we had - outside of us.

Genuine happiness can only be achieved when we transform our way of life from the unthinking pursuit of pleasure to one committed to enriching our inner lives, when we focus on 'being more' rather than simply having more.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

I mean I don't really think about it. You know, do you know what I often say to myself? I think you're very lucky in life if you know what you want to do.

I've gotten to a point, where I realize that happiness doesn't come from the outside.

Real life is the life that's in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you're in relationship with.

You have to have something in your life that's more important than the work. People don't really like to admit that. They say, 'Oh, my work is my most important thing.'

Success isn't about things we acquire.

I'm not driven by money anymore.

Life is about fulfillment. If your life isn't fulfilled, your stomach can never supply what's missing.

No matter what you achieve in life, you're always wondering, 'Is there something I should be doing? Is there something I'm missing?

To be ignorant or unconvinced of one's own needs has become the unforgivable anti-social act. The good citizen is one who imputes standardized needs to himself with such conviction that he drowns out any desire for alternatives, much less the renunciation of need.

He is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey nor to command in order to be something.

My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help.

If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives.

I don't need millions of dollars. I need to know that what I'm doing with my life is expressing who I am, and maybe making people happy. This is all we get.

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.