If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy than in endeavoring to think so ourselves

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

We trouble ourselves less to become happy, than to make others believe we are so.

Our idea of happiness may be the very thing that’s preventing us from being happy.

We should try to be happy, just to set an example

Happiness is a hard master — particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestionably, than truth.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

All joy in this world comes from wanting others to be happy, and all suffering in this world comes from wanting only oneself to be happy. — Shantideva

Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.

We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain — and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running

The happier people can be, the unhappier they are.

the easiest way to make ourselves happy is to see that others are happy.

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.