Hugh Downs

How often, for example, have you said or heard someone else say, “All I really want in this life is to be happy”? It sounds like a commonsense answer, but as a life goal, it is destined for failure. My dog, Barkley, wants to be happy. Does that mean that the two of you want the same things? I don’t think so. I’ll bet everything I own that you and Barkley define happiness very differently. So unless you’re willing to settle for someone scratching your belly and letting you sleep under the coffee table, you might want to be a little more precise about what you as a unique individual really want.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

If you are not happy every morning when you get up, leave for work, or start to work at home, and are not enthusiastic about doing that, you will not be successful.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.

Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

I think happiness is love.

If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.

Choose happiness, not success, as your life’s goal. If you become successful but aren’t happy, then what is the point?

A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.

Pursue whatever it is that you want to do with your life. It is the only secret to happiness that I know except for maybe true love, that and maybe having the amazing health insurance plan that our congressmen have.

My number one daily habit is to give myself permission to be happy. It’s physical and mental; it’s my diet, physical activity, and emotional state. That’s all tied together.

Let’s make ourselves happy

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.