Love × Happiness

Love and Happiness

Browse 30 quotations catalogued under love with "happiness" in the text or topic label.

30 quotes

This collection contains 30 quotations filed under Love with "happiness" in the quote text or topic label. These keyword matches offer a starting point for exploring Love and Happiness; they do not by themselves establish a shared argument or a historical connection between the authors.

The authors represented include Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, and others. Read each quotation in its own context rather than assuming that these authors share a position.

One matching quotation reads: "The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sor…" The full quotation appears below.

Another matching quotation reads: "I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be." Compare the wording and surrounding context to decide how each passage relates to your question.

Use the quotation links to explore individual entries and the author links to visit their profiles on QuoteLineage. For broader reading beyond these keyword matches, explore all Love quotes or the concept page for Happiness.

30 Quotes on Love and Happiness

"The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection."

— Charles Dickens

"I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be."

— Charles Dickens

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

— Victor Hugo

"The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness..."

— Leo Tolstoy

"No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?"

— Virginia Woolf

"The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man."

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints."

— William James

"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps -- what more can the heart of man desire?"

— Leo Tolstoy

"A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought."

— Bertrand Russell

"Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here."

— Leo Tolstoy

"So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused."

— Hermann Hesse

"When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace."

— George Bernard Shaw

"The slave is a man, "the image of God," but "a little lower than the angels;" possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of a God. It is such a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish men from things, and persons from property. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over his victim."

— Frederick Douglass

"There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul against the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond."

— Stefan Zweig

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher."

— Thomas Paine

"Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased."

— Anton Chekhov

"There is nothing on earth more beautiful to me than your smile...no sound sweeter than your laughter...no pleasure greater than holding you in my arms. I realized today that I could never live without you, stubborn little hellion that you are. In this life and the next, you’re my only hope of happiness. Tell me, Lillian, dearest love...how can you have reached so far inside my heart?"

— Lisa Kleypas

"But I have to confess, I'm glad you two had at least a few months of happiness together."I'm not glad," says Peeta. "I wish we had waited until the whole thing was done officially."This takes even Caesar aback. "Surely even a brief time is better than no time?"Maybe I'd think that, too, Caesar," says Peeta bitterly, "If it weren't for the baby."

— Suzanne Collins

"I can do pain. That’s the easy part of life. It’s everything else, happiness, laughter, love, that’s fucking complicated."

— Jessica Sorensen

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness."

— Woody Allen

"Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it’s only faith that gives love its strength and its joy."

— Sergei Lukyanenko

"Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not."

— David Levithan

"What sexual preference do you hope she has?” “Happiness.” Isnt that cool?"

— Francesca Lia Block

"He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other."

— W. Somerset Maugham

"Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury."

— Elizabeth Gilbert

"I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back."

— Emily Giffin

"There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved."

— George Sand

"Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own."

— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"Happiness is the china shop love is the bull."

— H.L. Mencken

"Happiness flourishes where there is happiness, and love withers quickly in an atmosphere of constraint and gloom."

— André Maurois

Key thinkers on this theme

Charles Dickens· Literature Victor Hugo· Literature Leo Tolstoy· Literature Virginia Woolf· Literature Jean-Jacques Rousseau· Philosophy

Related ideas in Love

All Love quotes Explore the idea of Happiness