Happy Motto Quotes

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Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.
Shannon L. Alder
I have come to realize making yourself happy is most important. Never be ashamed of how you feel. You have the right feel any emotion you want, and do what makes you happy. That's my life motto"<3
Demi Lovato
Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy. That's my life motto.
Demi Lovato
In this particular lifestyle the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.
Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
Not to give up under any circumstances should be the motto of our life: we shall try again and again, and we are bound to succeed. There will be obstacles, but we have to defy them. So do not give up, do not give up! Continue, continue! The goal is ahead of you. If you do not give up, you are bound to reach your destined goal.
Sri Chinmoy (The Jewels of Happiness: Inspiration and Wisdom to Guide Your Life-Journey)
I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with vision of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three year down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not very popular one, who once has dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is. When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lied you head. I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiviness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obssesion for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me. Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art. LIVE FAST. DIE YOUNG. BE WILD. AND HAVE FUN. I believe in the country America used to be. I belive in the person I want to become, I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever- *I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself- I Ride. I Just Ride.* Who are you? Are you in touch with all your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself where you’re free to experience them? I Have. I Am Fucking Crazy. But I Am Free.
Lana Del Rey
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular lifestyle the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.
Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
My motto has always been “Time enjoyed is never wasted.” Except replace “enjoyed” with “drunk” and “never wasted” with “never not a good idea.
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose Your idea of happiness ... To fight Your idea of misery ... Submission The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility The vice you detest most ... Servility Your aversion ... Martin Tupper Favourite occupation ... Book-worming Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust] Favourite flower ... Daphne Favourite colour ... Red Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny Favourite dish ... Fish Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me] Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted].
Karl Marx
For it was Saturday night, the best and bingiest glad-time of the week, one of the fifty-two holidays in the slow-turning Big Wheel of the year, a violent preamble to a prostrate Sabbath. Piled up passions were exploded on Saturday night, and the effect of a week's monotonous graft in the factory was swilled out of your system in a burst of goodwill. You followed the motto of 'be drunk and be happy,' kept your crafty arms around female waists, and felt the beer going beneficially down into the elastic capacity of your guts.
Alan Sillitoe (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning)
Today I am planting a garden of happiness. The seeds are my closed mouth.
Bunmi Laditan (The Honest Toddler: A Child's Guide to Parenting)
Not many are the moments in life, where the easiest choice also happens to be the best one. Cherish and remember those moments, but do not let them become a habit, for the fruits that hard work reaps are irreplaceable.
Rosen Topuzov
Although I am a political liberal, I believe that conservatives have a better understanding of moral development (although not of moral psychology in general—they are too committed to the myth of pure evil). Conservatives want schools to teach lessons that will create a positive and uniquely American identity, including a heavy dose of American history and civics, using English as the only national language. Liberals are justifiably wary of jingoism, nationalism, and the focus on books by “dead white males,” but I think everyone who cares about education should remember that the American motto of e pluribus, unum (from many, one) has two parts. The celebration of pluribus should be balanced by policies that strengthen the unum.
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom)
Success depends on your attitude; happiness depends on your gratitude.
Debasish Mridha
The motto on the front door says “Happiness happens when you get.” The sign on the lesser-used back door counters “Happiness happens when you give.
Max Lucado (How Happiness Happens: Finding Lasting Joy in a World of Comparison, Disappointment, and Unmet Expectations)
This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene deceased To Ray deceased To Francy permanent psychosis To Kathy permanent brain damage To Jim deceased To Val massive permanent brain damage To Nancy permanent psychosis To Joanne permanent brain damage To Maren deceased To Nick deceased To Terry deceased To Dennis deceased To Phil permanent pancreatic damage To Sue permanent vascular damage To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.
Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
Precision Shipping." Shahara read the logo off the side of the station. "Nice name." "Thanks. Our motto is 'Be happy with our service or we'll kill you'." - Shahara & Syn
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Fire (The League: Nemesis Rising, #2))
Newspaper columnist Dave Barry once wrote that the motto of the wedding industry is, 'Money can't buy you happiness, so you might as well give your money to us.
Denise Fields (Bridal Bargains: Secrets to Throwing a Fantastic Wedding on a Realistic Budget)
Semper Taedium could be our motto: 'Always Boredom'. I'd be happy with that.
Craig Alanson (SpecOps (Expeditionary Force, #2))
Who wasn’t either bored or troubled with their own story and only too happy to leap into someone else’s? It further confirmed her motto: Reality sucks. Make-believe rocks.
T. Rae Mitchell (Fate's Fables (Fate's Journey, #1))
Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Whenever Eleanor felt nervous or scared, she told herself to be happy instead. (It didn’t really make her feel better, but it kept her from feeling worse …)
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
My repeated and often preached motto to my employees was, “The customer pays your paycheck, not me—keep them happy.
M.J. DeMarco (The Millionaire Fastlane)
It cost nothing to be loving.
Debasish Mridha
motto is Happiness is a #Hashtag and we live life knowing the fairy tale is possible, even if you only get it online.
J.A. Huss (Follow (Social Media, #1))
Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
The motto of Dwayne Hoover’s and Kilgore Trout’s nation was this, which meant in a language nobody spoke anymore, Out of Many, One: “E pluribus unum.” The undippable flag was a beauty, and the anthem and the vacant motto might not have mattered much, if it weren’t for this: a lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made. It might have comforted them some if their anthem and their motto had mentioned fairness or brotherhood or hope or happiness, had somehow welcomed them to the society and its real estate. If
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
A clear Brunian ‘coincidence of contraries’ has surfaced again, for to be happy when miserable translates Bruno’s paradoxical motto which preceded his play Candelaio: ‘In tristitia hilaris: in hilaritate tristis’—in sad- ness, happiness and in happiness, sadness.
Finn Fordham (Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals)
The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then the righteous shall shine forth in the Kingdom of their Father. He is willing to wait for that day. In the meantime he will have attained a place of soul rest. As he walks on in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him. The old struggle to defend himself is over. He has found the peace which meekness brings.
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular lifestyle the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years.
Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
So if you hear something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in issues is merely to point out how badly we’re doing, not to suggest a way we might do better. Don’t confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they ought to be. And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there’s a solution, you’re part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope. P.S. In case you’re wondering, personally I’m a joyful individual, I had a long happy marriage and a close and loving family, my career has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and it continues to expand. I’m a personal optimist, but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger, is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don’t confuse my point of view with cynicism–the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything’s gonna be all right. And P.P.S., by the way, if by some chance you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still don’t wish to be included.
George Carlin (Brain Droppings)
She tries not to be judgmental about reading—No such thing as a guilty pleasure is Cathy’s motto, and it’s one Hannah largely subscribes to. Jeffrey Archer to Geoffrey Chaucer, Outlander to The Outsider—they all keep the wheels of publishing turning and money coming into the tills, and if they give someone a happy few hours, that’s good enough for her.
Ruth Ware (The It Girl)
If one were to choose a single word to characterize that identity, it would have to be more. For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors. A bumper sticker, a sardonic motto, and a charge dating from the Age of Woodstock have recast the Jeffersonian trinity in modern vernacular: “Whoever dies with the most toys wins”; “Shop till you drop”; “If it feels good, do it.
Andrew J. Bacevich (The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project))
When we are thrown into confusion by inner troubles, we have no idea how to soothe them and instinctively turn outward. We spend our lives cobbling together makeshift solutions, trying to imagine the conditions that will make us happy. By force of habit, this way of living becomes the norm and “that’s life!” our motto. And although the search for temporary well-being may occasionally be successful, it is never possible to control the quantity, quality, or duration of exterior circumstances. That holds true for almost every aspect of life: love, family, health, wealth, power, comfort, pleasure.
Matthieu Ricard (Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill)
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years.
Philip K. Dick
...all the little dos and don'ts, the petty prejudices and snobberies, the silly sentimentalities and religious hypocrisies that made up the veneer of what so many of Forster's contemporaries considered civilization. As Forster saw it, these little things blinded people to the values of the good life. They were distractions which stood between mankind and the liberty of spirit which is one essential to any real happiness. And they blocked human communication, the basis of mutual understanding, which is the other. "Only connect" was Forster's famed motto. While we are chained to shibboleths, we are still children. We are not serious, we play with life.
E.M. Forster (Four Novels – Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End)
playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: ‘An intoxicating brew of science, philosophy and futurism’ Mail on Sunday)
Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’. On the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding script or purpose, then humans too are not confined to any predetermined role. We can do anything we want – provided we can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance. Plagues and droughts have no cosmic meaning – but we can eradicate them. Wars are not a necessary evil on the way to a better future – but we can make peace. No paradise awaits us after death – but we can create paradise here on earth and live in it for ever, if we just manage to overcome some technical difficulties.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: ‘An intoxicating brew of science, philosophy and futurism’ Mail on Sunday)
the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’. On the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding script or purpose, then humans too are not confined to any predetermined role. We can do anything we want – provided we can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance. Plagues and droughts have no cosmic meaning – but we can eradicate them. Wars are not a necessary evil on the way to a better future – but we can make peace. No paradise awaits us after death – but we can create paradise here on earth and live in it for ever, if we just manage to overcome some technical difficulties.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: ‘An intoxicating brew of science, philosophy and futurism’ Mail on Sunday)
Being unable to deal with the complexity of the world has seen us retreat into what Curtis calls a “static world”. Instead of looking to change the world for the better, we look either to change small things (our bodies, our own rights as an individual), or we fall back into the past. “This obsession with risk that politicians, terror experts and finance people have, it’s about going back into the past, looking for patterns – which computers now allow you to do – and adjusting everything to make sure things are stable. “When I was working with Massive Attack, I used an old Bauhaus song called Bela Lugosi’s Dead and [on the big screens] I constantly repeated the phrase, ‘If you like this, then you’ll love that.’ I think in a way that’s the motto of our time. We’ll give you tomorrow something very similar to what you had yesterday. And then the world will be stable. And that’s true in politics, finance and culture. “Look at the way culture plays it,” he continues. “I mean, look at me. Look at Edgar Wright: he makes movies constantly referencing things. We constantly play yesterday back to you in a slightly altered form, to try and make you feel stable and happy. And the world stays stuck and everyone gets ratty, which is why they all snark at each other on the internet.
Anonymous
Describe the defeated ones,” said a merchant, when he saw that the Copt had finished speaking. And he answered: The defeated are those who never fail. Defeat means that we lose a particular battle or war. Failure does not allow us to go on fighting. Defeat comes when we fail to get something we very much want. Failure does not allow us to dream. Its motto is: “Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.” Defeat ends when we launch into another battle. Failure has no end; it is a lifetime choice. Defeat is for those who, despite their fears, live with enthusiasm and faith. Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honor of losing and the joy of winning. I am not here to tell you that defeat is part of life; we all know that. Only the defeated know Love. Because it is in the realm of Love that we fight our first battles—and generally lose. I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought. They managed to avoid scars, humiliations, and feelings of helplessness, as well as those moments when even warriors doubt the existence of God. Such people can say with pride: “I never lost a battle.” On the other hand, they will never be able to say: “I won a battle.” Not that they care. They live in a universe in which they believe they are invulnerable; they close their eyes to injustices and to suffering; they feel safe because they do not have to deal with the daily challenges faced by those who risk stepping out beyond their own boundaries. They have never heard the words “good-bye” or “I’ve come back. Embrace me with the fervor of someone who, having lost me, has found me again.” Those who were never defeated seem happy and superior, masters of a truth they never had to lift a finger to achieve. They are always on the side of the strong. They’re like hyenas, who eat only the leavings of lions. They teach their children: “Don’t get involved in conflicts; you’ll only lose. Keep your doubts to yourself and you’ll never have any problems. If someone attacks you, don’t get offended or demean yourself by hitting back. There are more important things in life.” In the silence of the night, they fight their imaginary battles: their unrealized dreams, the injustices to which they turned a blind eye, the moments of cowardice they managed to conceal from other people—but not from themselves—and the love that crossed their path with a sparkle in its eyes, the love God had intended for them, but which they lacked the courage to embrace. And they promise themselves: “Tomorrow will be different.” But tomorrow comes and the paralyzing question surfaces in their mind: “What if it doesn’t work out?” And so they do nothing. Woe to those who were never beaten! They will never be winners in this life.
Paulo Coelho (Manuscript Found in Accra)
Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’. On the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding script or purpose, then humans too are not confined to any predetermined role. We can do anything we want – provided we can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance. Plagues and droughts have no cosmic meaning – but we can eradicate them. Wars are not a necessary evil on the way to a better future – but we can make peace. No paradise awaits us after death – but we can create paradise here on earth and live in it for ever, if we just manage to overcome some technical difficulties.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: ‘An intoxicating brew of science, philosophy and futurism’ Mail on Sunday)
We say “universe” and the word makes us think of a possible unification of things. One can be a spiritualist, a materialist, a pantheist, just as one can be indifferent to philosophy and satisfied with common sense: the fact remains that one always conceives of one or several simple principles by which the whole of material and moral things might be explained. This is because our intelligence loves simplicity. It seeks to reduce effort, and insists that nature was arranged in such a way as to demand of us, in order to be thought, the least possible labor. It therefore provides itself with the exact minimum of elements and principles with which to recompose the indefinite series of objects and events. But if instead of reconstructing things ideally for the greater satisfaction of our reason we confine ourselves purely and simply to what is given us by experience, we should think and express ourselves in quite another way. While our intelligence with its habits of economy imagines effects as strictly proportioned to their causes, nature, in its extravagance, puts into the cause much more than is required to produce the effect. While our motto is Exactly what is necessary, nature’s motto is More than is necessary,—too much of this, too much of that, too much of everything. Reality, as James sees it, is redundant and superabundant. Between this reality and the one constructed by the philosophers, I believe he would have established the same relation as between the life we live every day and the life which actors portray in the evening on the stage. On the stage, each actor says and does only what has to be said and done; the scenes are clear-cut; the play has a beginning, a middle and an end; and everything is worked out as economically as possible with a view to an ending which will be happy or tragic. But in life, a multitude of useless things are said, many superfluous gestures made, there are no sharply-drawn situations; nothing happens as simply or as completely or as nicely as we should like; the scenes overlap; things neither begin nor end; there is no perfectly satisfying ending, nor absolutely decisive gesture, none of those telling words which give us pause: all the effects are spoiled. Such is human life.
Henri Bergson (The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics)
Service to others is essential to Joy in living. We can't live selfishly and be completely happy. - Shiny Happy Housecleaning in Henderson, NV. Motto on their van.
Sherry - Shiny Happy Housecleaning
Fortune Without Love (The Sonnet) Fortune without love is sheer curse, For life's true blessing is love alone. Live to love and love to live, With this as motto all good is honed. They say you can't live on love alone, And indeed it's true to its factual core. But green of dollar without green of heart, Grows on us like toxic mold. Too much of dollar can kill a person, Just like too little causes starvation. Use money like you use your car, To go places, not to live at the gas station. Put love and life above all else. You'll know what's sense, what's nonsense.
Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
POEM I watched an armory combing its bronze bricks and in the sky there were glistening rails of milk. Where had the swan gone, the one with the lame back? Now mounting the steps I enter my new home full of grey radiators and glass ashtrays full of wool. Against the winter I must get a samovar embroidered with basil leaves and Ukranian mottos to the distant sound of wings, painfully anti-wind, a little bit of the blue summer air will come back as the steam chuckles in the monster's steamy attack and I'll be happy here and happy there, full of tea and tears. I don't suppose I'll ever get to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least. My new home will be full of wood, roots and the like, while I pace in a turtleneck sweater, repairing my bike. I watched the palisades shivering in the snow of my face, which had grown preternaturally pure. Once I destroyed a man's idea of himself to have him.
Frank O'Hara (Lunch Poems)
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a lifestyle. In this particular lifestyle the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your lifestyle, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. “Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.
Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly)
We are taught to live by the motto of ‘forgive and forget’. But is it something you truly practice?
Jay D'Cee
My mother had observed that when people talk often, they have a lot to say to each other, and when they talk rarely, they have little to say to each other. So now my mother, father, Elizabeth, and I have “update.” Every several days, we send out an e-mail with the subject “update,” and we recount the most mundane, daily details of our lives. The motto of “update” is “It’s okay to be boring.” There’s no expectation that anyone send a response. What we’ve found is that knowing these dull little details of one another’s lives makes us feel far more connected to one another, and when we do talk, we have a lot more to say. This idea of “update” has really resonated with other people.
Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun)
Figure it out. Work through it. You’ll find your answer. What’s my plan? I don’t have one, except to do what I do every day. Keep moving forward. “Get through today? Get through practice, and our games this week, and then I’m going to get through HockeyFest. Probably spend a little extra time on the lake. It’s kind of my happy place.” She nods. “One day at a time, one game at a time. I like that plan. My happy place has always been the weight room. I figure, if I can tackle that, I can tackle anything. You want to know my personal motto? ‘I can do hard things.’ I’ve proven that I can get through a challenge, so I can do it again. I’d say the same for you.
Sara Biren (Cold Day in the Sun)
She tottered permanently on the edge of outrage, swore relentlessly in front of the guests, who she regarded en masse as an unnecessary, germ-infested, stain-creating evil and appeared, on the face of things, to hate the world so much that ‘Sweet death, take me now’ could have been the motto on her blemish-free apron instead of ‘Je place le bonheur au-dessous de tout’, roughly translated as ‘I place happiness above all else’, and surely bought in jest.
Ian Moore (Death and Croissants (A Follet Valley Mystery, #1))
Gary had started talking about ‘the old days’. He might have happy memories of teenage parties and football games but I left all that behind the day I left Talgarth High. Never go back, that’s my motto.
Elly Griffiths (The Stranger Diaries (Harbinder Kaur, #1))
Be grateful for every outcome, those you consider to be good or evil, and happiness should become your motto in life.
Mwanandeke Kindembo (Resistance To Intolerance)
The bitch’s motto is, ‘After me, you come first.’ Whether it’s a man, or a job, or a family member, the priority is always her own happiness. In this way, and in this way only, a woman controls her own destiny, and realizes and safeguards her power. She’s never at the mercy of anyone else.
J.T. Geissinger (Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games, #1))
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!
Ritchie Robertson (The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790)
No happy ending here. ‘The Mended Wood’ is a child’s motto to keep alive the pathetic hopes of rabbits who just need to face facts.
S.D. Smith (The Green Ember (The Green Ember #1))
Epicurus’s choice of a walled garden, in a relatively remote location, was no accident. In a sharp break with the Stoics and other philosophical schools, he urged his followers to avoid “the prison of business affairs and politics.” Political bonds, Epicurus thought, reduced your self-sufficiency, and amounted to outsourcing your happiness. His motto was Lathe Biosas. “Live in obscurity
Eric Weiner (The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers)
Before I was twenty-one years old, I had studied in most of the schools of modern philosophy, and had thrown off my religion like an old rag. I was inflated with a sense of my own intellectual superiority over other men. It was philosophy which taught men to live, I declared, and philosophy which taught them to die. With that motto before me, I carefully set myself to annihilate every vestige of faith with which I had ever been endowed. I succeeded—too well. It is dead; and sometimes I fear that it will never reawaken. And what am I? As miserable a man as ever drew breath upon this earth. It seems to me as though I had crushed a part of my very life and the sore will rankle for ever. “There is a part of man’s nature, Philip—that is to say, of such men as I have been and you will be—the sympathetic, emotional, reverential part, which cries out for some belief in a higher, an infinite Power, for some sort of religion which it can cling to and entwine with every action of daily life. You must satisfy that craving if you desire to know happiness. For me there is no such knowledge. I have deliberately committed spiritual suicide; I have torn up faith by the roots and have made a void in my heart, which nothing else can ever fill. Frankly, I tell you, Philip, that there are times when religion of any sort seems to me no better than a fairy-tale. It need not seem so to you. Shape out for yourself any form of belief—that of the Christian is as good as any other—and resolutely cling to it. It is my advice to you—mine who believe in no God and no future state. Follow it and farewell!” He held out his hand and clasped mine for a moment.
E. Phillips Oppenheim (E. Phillips Oppenheim Ultimate Collection: 72 Novels & 100+ Short Stories in One Volume)
I discovered years ago that there is great truth to the happy wife-happy life motto.
Hope Holloway (The Asheville Christmas Gift (Carolina Christmas, #2))
For the future, the motto is, “No days unalert.” Nothing should catch you by surprise because you are constantly imagining problems before they arise. Instead of spending your time dreaming of your plan’s happy ending, you must work on calculating every possible permutation and pitfall that might emerge in it. The further you see, the more steps ahead you plan, the more powerful you become.
Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
The mind is much stronger than most people realize. Concentrate on being happy, living in the moment, cherishing special events in the past and moving forward towards a beautiful future. That's my motto!
Jes Fuhrmann (The Diary of Pink Pearl Continues: Volume 2: I'm Wide Awake And Born Again! The Quadrilogy)
Ella hadn't thought before to question her mother's happiness-but how many of her mottoes and devices had been antidotes to despair.
Amy Witting (A change in the lighting)
The Boy Scouts might have the motto "Be Prepared," but where I grew up, you practically went straight from diapers to manhood.
Phil Robertson (Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander)
In the second Unzeitgemäße Betrachtung Nietzsche speaks about “individuals who form a kind of bridge over the wild stream of becoming” and live in “timeless simultaneity” “thanks to history, which allows for such cooperation”; “they live as the republic of geniuses, of which Schopenhauer speaks somewhere.” Individuals live in timeless simultaneity insofar as they are inspired in turn “to the production of what is great” by the great individuals of the past, who are made present by the monumental consideration of history. Schopenhauer, who in his last work will make Rousseau’s motto, Vitam impendere vero, his own, using it as an epigraph, says about the republic of geniuses: “In this it goes as follows:—one giant calls out to another across the bleak interval of centuries, without the world of dwarfs, creeping along below, perceiving any more than noise and without understanding any more than that something is happening: and again, this tribe of dwarfs below ceaselessly pulls its pranks and makes a lot of noise, drags along what those giants have let fall from above, proclaims heroes who are themselves dwarfs, and more of the same, which leaves those giant minds undisturbed, to continue their elevated conversation of spirits. I mean: each genius understands what those of his kind once said, with- out being understood by the living, either contemporary or during the interval, and he says what those he lives among do not understand, but which someday his equal will appreciate and an- swer.” The agreement with Rousseau is obvious. Still, there are differences. Unlike Rousseau’s “inhabitants of the ideal world,” Schopenhauer’s “giants,” to judge by this short text, remain in their historical location. And neither Schopenhauer’s geniuses nor Nietzsche’s individuals are more specifically determined or more precisely identified by un signe caractéristique. Despite all his dissatisfactions with historicism, Schopenhauer’s speech about the conversation of spirits among the geniuses, which impressed the young Nietzsche on his way to philosophy, does not rise to the concise reply Rousseau gave to historicism in his allegory of the world of the philoso- phers.
Heinrich Meier (On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life: Reflections on Rousseau's Rêveries in Two Books)
When my eyes shall be turned for the last time on the meridian sun, I hope I may see him shining brightly upon my united, free and happy Country. I hope I shall not live to see his beams falling upon the dispersed fragments of the structure of this once glorious Union. I hope that I may not see the flag of my Country, with its stars separated or obliterated, torn by commotion, smoking with the blood of civil war. I hope I may not see the standard raised of separate State rights, star against star, and stripe against stripe; but that the flag of the Union may keep its stars and its stripes corded and bound together in indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not see written, as its motto, first Liberty, and then Union. I hope I shall see no such delusion and deluded motto on the flag of that Country. I hope to see spread all over it, blazoned in letters of light, and proudly floating over Land and Sea that other sentiment, dear to my heart, “Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable!
Robert A. Caro (Master of the Senate (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #3))