Hosea Ballou Quotes

I think the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of reality because illusion never leaves us ultimately happy.

It's good to be happy and tell us how cool your life is and how awesome you are on social media. That's great because it inspires other people to be happy, too. But a lot of times, people are trying to be happy in the wrong ways - with money or with different things that are not true happiness.

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.

It may sound too good to be true, but once you've seen the happiest people in your life who have nothing, you really start rethinking what the world, and society, tells us that we need to be happy.

What could I wish for the present but to take the greatest pleasure in being what I am?

I'm fulfilled in what I do. I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes - the finer things of life - would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

I'm just happy. I'm just me right now.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

I wish people could achieve what they think would bring them happiness in order for them to realize that that's not really what happiness is.

You see I found I didn't have to act to be happy.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I don't believe happiness comes out of material gain, for sure.

First and foremost, you've got to make yourself happy. Essentially being who you are is the most important thing. When you're after truth, happiness always comes.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.

He who has no wish to be happier is the happiest of men.

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

The gratification of desire is not happiness.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

Alas! if the principles of contentment are not within us, the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man's stature as to his happiness.

I learned a long time ago that fame and money is not a ticket to happiness.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality - it connects you to reality.

'Happiness' is a pointless goal.