If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The happier people can be, the unhappier they are.

I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.

What good is it to seek our happiness in the opinion of others if we cannot find it in ourselves?

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.

"Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy. "It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad," said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages."