The Happiness Of Pursuit Quotes

In other words, dopamine is not about the happiness of reward. It's about the happiness of pursuit of reward that has a decent chance of occurring. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit. ~ Denis Waitley

My aim in life isn't so much the pursuit of happiness as the happiness of pursuit. ~ Charles Saatchi

If you've ever felt a strange sense of sadness or alienation, there's a potential way out of the confusion- just shift this feeling into a sense of purpose. It's not about happiness, although happiness often results from doing something you love. Instead, it's about challenge and fulfillment, finding the perfect combination of striving and achievement that comes from reaching a big goal. ~ Chris Guillebeau

One thing is certain: the time will come when the opinions of priests and doctors must give way to the science of life; for their opinions lead to death and misery, and the science of life is health and happiness. ~ Phineas Quimby

When the needs of one person are being met by the other, there is laughter. ~ Yakov Smirnoff

If you can, serve other people, other sentient beings. If not, at least refrain from harming them. I think that is the whole basis of my philosophy. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life and can not imagine that there can be happiness in life. This is the century that has shaped all the conquering arms against this elusive adversary called boredom. Love, Poetry, Music, Theatre, Painting, Architecture, Court, Salons, Parks and Gardens, Gastronomy, Letters, Arts, Science, all contributed to the satisfaction of physical appetites, intellectual and even moral refinement of all pleasures, all the elegance and all the pleasures. The existence was so well filled that if the seventeenth century was the Great Age of glories, the eighteenth was that of indigestion. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand-Perigord

The truth is that Dr. Juvenal Urbino's suit had never been undertaken in the name of love, and it was curious, to say the least, that a militant Catholic like him would offer her only worldly goods: security, order, happiness, contiguous numbers that, once they were added together, might resemble love, almost be love. But they were not love, and these doubts increased her confusion, because she was also not convinced that love was really what she most needed to live. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It has taken me quite a few years to realize the fact that most of the thoughts in my head are not necessary. ~ Bert McCoy

Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

The measure of success is happiness and peace of mind. ~ Bobby Davro

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. ~ Thomas Paine

But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness.
At certain moments, it is reason enough to live. ~ Steve Almond

We really shouldn't rely on anybody else to validate our existence. People make the mistake of entering into a relationship and thinking that the other person will fill the void that they are missing, that they will bring them the happiness and joy they are looking for. ~ Hagir Elsheikh

Those who've known great sadness have a better appreciation for happiness. Those who've seen death know the value of life. ~ Suzanne Supplee

Paris is a sensuous woman every man has loved, even if only in his dreams. Once he has been deep inside her, walked her streets and tasted her delights, he can never forget her. Yet no matter how strong the memory of her remains, it cannot prepare him for the sheer beauty of her nakedness as he gazes upon her for the second time; the intoxicating fragrance of her hair as it brushes against him as it did when she let him love her; the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips as he strokes her breathtakingly graceful form; or the searing fire which courses through every fiber of his soul now that she is within reach.

For every man blessed with a woman's love, she is a shrine to his happiness now that he need search no more. But for those who reside in obscurity within the lonely domicile of an empty heart, she is the hope of finding love. In his tortured heart, love waits for him at a corner cafe in the woman's smile two tables away; it lingers in the melodic laughter of a girl riding past him on a bicycle; and sometimes, when the woman is smiling at someone else, and the girl rides past him without notice, he finds love beneath the skirt of the darkly sensual woman waiting for him under a streetlamp. ~ Bobby Underwood

​ "This place is fun, Downtown is fun!" I said, looking at the blurred lights of the lamps on the street. "No wonder you left me for this… I wouldn't be surprised if a ghost came out." I closed my fist, trying to catch the lights. "Now I get it, Dan! You're a ghost!"
​ "Am I?" he talked to me in an accommodating way, like anyone would do with a friend too drunk to think clearly.
​ "Yes! There's even two of you now."
​ "Of course, that would be the only possible reason." We reached the parking lot.
​ "Say Dan, have you come back to help me with Shallie? But if you're a ghost, can you just call her for me?" I grabbed his arm. "Can you? Can you bring her to me?" Suddenly all the fake happiness I was feeling before left me in a deep, black desperation. Dan's expression changed too, and got darker.
​ "I'm not a ghost, Drew," he said, calmly, securing the helmet under my chin. "I'm sorry," he added. ~ Elen Chase

There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it's the right unhappiness. ~ Jonathan Franzen

you, and have no little girls' clothes to mend." "Yes," said Maggie. "It is with me as I used to think it would be with the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have got so stupid with the habit of turning backward and forward in that narrow space that he would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad habit of being unhappy." "But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will make you lose that bad habit," said Lucy, sticking the black butterfly absently in her own collar, while her eyes met Maggie's affectionately. "You dear, tiny thing," said Maggie, in one of her bursts of loving admiration, "you enjoy other people's happiness so much, I believe you would do without any of your own. I wish I were like you." "I've never been tried in that way," said Lucy. "I've always ~ George Eliot

With the sentiment of the stars and moon such nights I get all the free margins and indefiniteness of music or
poetry, fused in geometry's utmost exactness. ~ Walt Whitman

One thing seemed to suggest that I might have some wisp of beauty to offer the world: the nature of my heart, which remained free of bitterness and anger. I feared, but I did not hate. I knew dread, but I did not judge. I loved and wished to be loved in return. And though my life had been circumscribed, though my experience had been limited by the threats I faced, I was usually happy. In this world, where woe and misery were common, where sometimes darkness seemed about to drown civilization, perhaps a capacity for happiness and hope was beauty of a kind, a small welcome light in the flood. ~ Dean Koontz

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I wish we may learn from all our changes, to be sober and watchful, not to rest in grace received, in experience or comforts, but still to be pressing forward, and never think ourselves either safe or happy, but when we are beholding the glory of Christ by the light of faith in the glass of the Gospel. To view him as God manifest in the flesh, as all in all in himself, and all in all for us; this is cheering, this is strengthening, this makes hard things easy, and bitter things sweet. This includes all I can wish for my dear friends, that you may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of Jesus. To know him, is the shortest description of true grace; to know him better, is the surest mark of growth in grace; to know him perfectly, is eternal life. This is the prize of our high calling; the sum and substance of all we can desire or hope for is, to see him as he is, and to be like him: and to this honor and happiness he will surely bring all that love his name.81 ~ Tony Reinke

Looking at morning dew serenading on the petals of flowers is an ecstatic moment! This makes us realise that it is the simple pleasures of life that give us the most happiness! ~ Avijeet Das

Sonnet III: Black Coffin opened wide for all to See

Black Coffin opened wide for all to See,
The lifeless form of one I loved so dear.
O, listen! mournful knells that soon shall be
All night long tolling for the folk to hear.
The lanterns overlight the old churchyard
To watch the coffin lowered into the ground;
Soon Frost shall grasp the turf already hard,
Decay ye have to face without a sound.
But years have pass'd herein do I relate
My dear sweet mother's form within my mind.
Still happiness fills all my heart and state,
As I see my small family so kind.
Love cannot be withheld by death or grave,
It stays alive within the heart so brave. ~ Timothy Salter

It is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

No truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributor of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well being of communities. ~ John Adams

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it. ~ Elbert Hubbard

You can travel to the ends of the earth, but you'll still be you." She tapped the side of my head. "You have to face the challenges in here before you find happiness out there. ~ L.H. Cosway

Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff. ~ David Mitchell

Experienced happiness refers to your feelings, to how happy you are as you live your life. In contrast, the satisfaction of the remembering self refers to your feelings when you think about your life. ~ Daniel Kahneman

These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent, horrified him and, however much he tried to disguise the fact, estranged him from her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How often he had told himself that to be loved by her was happiness; and now that she loved him only as a woman can for whom love outweighs all that is good in life, he was much farther from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. ~ Leo Tolstoy

However, amidst the bouquets of laughter that people tried to gift me, there was that memory of yours, lips curled up in a fashion, which makes my heart skip a beat even now. And then the happiness felt incomplete, because I missed you, missed you everyday more than the previous day. ~ Anmol Rawat

Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

The cause of that happiness was gone, of course, dead and gone, but still we put our faith in places. We think that if we just lived somewhere different, everything would be okay. We believe that if we paint the stairway a bright new colour, and clear out the closets, our minds will follow. We'll take just about any ray of hope rather than accept that ninety-five per cent of the world we inhabit exists within the confines of our own skulls. ~ Michael Marshall

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual. ~ Walter Savage Landor

They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in ... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. ~ George Washington

A child is an adult temporarily enduring conditions which exclude the possibility of happiness. ~ Rebecca West

Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk. ~ Maurice Sendak

Reiko had not kept a diary and was now denied the pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of the happiness of the past few months and consigning each page to the fire as she did so.
- Death in Midsummer and Other Stories ~ Yukio Mishima