I actually think happiness is the absence of suffering. It comes from peace, and that comes from being very careful about that desire, judgment, reaction. Realizing that you don’t actually need something anymore. That something is not important to you.

I think a lot of what we think of happiness is is just pleasure. It’s physical pleasure, either from, “Oh, that tasted good”. Or it might be momentary pleasure from, “He loves me, she loves me”.

The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.

To me, peace is happiness at rest and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace to happiness anytime you want.

Happiness to me is mainly not suffering, not desiring, not thinking too much about the future or the past, really embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, the way it is.

If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.

Happiness is that state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and your mind stops running into the future or running into the past to regret something or to plan something.

I think true happiness comes out of peace. Peace comes out of many things, but it comes from fundamentally understanding yourself.

Happiness is more about peace than it is about joy.

A lot of happiness is just being present.

I don’t plan. I’m not a planner. I prefer to live in the moment and be free and to flow and to be happy.

To me happiness is not about positive thoughts. It’s not about negative thoughts. It’s about the absence of desire, especially the absence of desire for external things. 

The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a skill that you develop and a choice that you make. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it.

Happiness is a state where nothing is missing.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about you to see if anyone will observe it; nor yet expect Plato’s Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.

You can pass your life in an equable flow of happiness if you can follow the right way and think and act in the right way.

Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived – not in the least like the rich. (What Marcus learned from his mother)

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind – things that exist only there – and clear out space for yourself: by comprehending the scale of the world, by contemplating infinite time, by thinking of the speed with which things change – each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equality unbounded time that follows.

Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and how nothing need arouse one’s irritation so long as one doesn’t make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.

All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.

To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. For all these [blessings in my life] require the help of the gods and fortune.

When you wish to delight yourself, think of the virtues of those who live with you; for instance, the activity of one, the modesty of another, the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth.

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.