21 Inspirational Quotes for Living a Happy New Year, by Cultivating Happiness in Every Season!

One of my self-development goals this year is to cultivate a habit of willful happiness, particularly when dealing with challenging situations. And in getting started on that goal, I’m feeling happy in sharing a selection of insightful and inspirational quotes on happiness, loosely grouped within a few themes.

Dear Reader, hope you find this list of quotes useful. Wishing you a very happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous year ahead, and many more to come!!

The Main Source of Happiness

1. “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
— Aristotle

2. “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
— Abraham Lincoln

3. “Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”
— Francesca Reigler

4. “It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
— Dale Carnegie

5. “People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.”
— Ramona L. Anderson

Nuts and Bolts of Happiness

6. “The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
— Allan K. Chalmers

7. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

8. “It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.”
— Margaret Bonnano

9. “Being happy doesn’t mean you’re perfect. It just means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.”
— K.B. Indiana

10. “Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. They way to be happy is to make others so.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll

11. “Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”
— Margaret Lee Runbeck

Some Keys to Happiness

12. “Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.”
— Buddha

13. “If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.”
— W. Beran Wolfe

14. “Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want to have something else or something more.”
— Brother David Steindl-Rast

15. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
— Albert Schweitzer

16. True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.”
— Seneca

Increasing and Multiplying Happiness

17. “Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.”
— Bernard Meltzer

18. “Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.”
— Unknown

19. “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”
— Michael J. Fox

20. “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.”
— Unknown

21. “If you think sunshine brings you happiness, then you haven’t danced in the rain.”
— Unknown

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P.S. In the process of compiling the above list of quotes, I was blessed with a wonderful, quotable insight that I would like to humbly record here, related to the topic of happiness and health:

“Where laughter is the best medicine, happiness is the best vaccine!”

P.S.2 And even when the happiness vaccine doesn’t work, the side effects still leave you smiling! Have a wonderful new year!! 🙂