We are taught you must blame your father your sisters your brothers the school the teachers-you can blame anyone but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault because if you want to change you're the one who has got to change. It's as simple as that isn't it?
~ Katharine Hepburn
Discontent is want of self-discipline it is infirmity of will.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is a conscious choice not an automatic response.
~ Mildred Barthel
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
~ Epictetus
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Happiness is not in our circumstances but in ourselves. It is not something we see like a rainbow or feel like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are.
~ John B. Sheerin
When I have been unhappy I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds when I am happy a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy but I that make it sweet.
~ John Ruskin
The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
~ Benjamin Franklin
To believe that if only we had this or that we would be happy or to pursue any excessive desire diverts us from seeing that happiness depends on an adequate self.
~ Eric Hoffer
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are by their very nature highly uncertain precarious ephemeral and subject to chance.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
All times are beautiful for those who maintain joy within them but there is no happy or favorable time for those with disconsolate or orphaned souls.
~ Rosalia Castro
Felicity felicity ... is quaffed out of a golden cup ... the flavour is with you alone and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
~ Joseph Conrad
Some pursue happiness others create it.
~ Anonymous
To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
~ Charles Caleb Colton
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
~ Henry David Thoreau
To wait for someone else or to expect someone else to make my life richer or fuller or more satisfying puts me in a constant state of suspension.
~ Kathleen Tierney Andrus
I am responsible for my own well-being my own happiness. The choices and decisions I make regarding my life directly influence the quality of my days.
If you do not find peace in yourself you will never find it anywhere else.
~ Paula A. Bendry
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you that you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
If people are suffering then they must look within themselves. ... Happiness is not something ready-made [Buddha] can give you. It comes from your own actions.
~ The Dalai Lama
Blame yourself if you have no branches or leaves don't accuse the sun of partiality.
~ Chinese Proverb
The opportunities for enjoyment in your life are limitless. If you feel you are not experiencing enough joy you have only yourself to blame.
~ David E. Bresler
Happiness is like time and space-we make and measure it ourselves it is as fancy as big as little as you please just a thing of contrasts and comparisons.
~ George Du Maurier
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
~ Agnes Repplier
The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
~ Sophocles
No human being can really understand another and no one can arrange another's happiness.
~ Graham Greene
No-one gives joy or sorrow. ... We gather the consequences of our own deeds.
~ Garuda Purana
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
~ Aristotle
The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your own ingenuity self-sufficiency and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead.
~ Dr. William Menninger
Somebody's boring me I think it's me.
~ Dylan Thomas
Being bored is an insult to oneself.
~ Jules Renard
When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
If your daily life seems poor do not blame it blame yourself tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.
~ Margaret Mitchell
One has to handle these negative experiences alone. You can't get help from your friends or family. You're finally alone with it and you have to come to grips with misfortune and go on.
~ Shirley Temple Black
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.
~ Alice Walker
If you want to succeed you must make your own opportunities as you go.
~ John B. Gough
It is sometimes the man who opens the door who is the last to enter the room.
~ Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco
If after all men cannot always make history have a meaning they can always act so that their own lives have one.
~ Albert Camus
