A Quote by Albert Ellis

Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

Albert Ellis

Quote Topics

Always Attained Because Endeavor Experienced Go Goal Happiness Having Largely Nature Next Our Striving Things Towards Want

Quote Author

Albert Ellis
American - Psychologist
September 27, 1913 - July 24, 2007

Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

Albert Ellis

Many people in Western culture are striving for success. They want the home, they want the great business. They want all of these outer things. But what we found in our research is that having those things, certainly doesn't guarantee what we really want, which is happiness. And that's when all those outer things come. They don't come from going after them first to get the happiness, it's backwards; you go for the sense of inner joy, of inner peace, of inner vision first and then all of the other things from the outside appear.

Marci Shimoff

I've always been like this - insecure - because I'm striving for something that can't be attained. I don't just want to be OK at this: I want to be the best at it, and I've never achieved that in my mind.

Victoria Pendleton

When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.

Hermann Hesse

Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.

Hermann Hesse

Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal.

Viktor E. Frankl

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life-happiness, freedom and peace of mind-are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Peyton C. March

Happiness is the struggle towards a summit and, when it is attained, it is happiness to glimpse new summits on the other side.

Fridtjof Nansen

Divine happiness, even the tiniest particle of a grain of it, never leaves one again; and when one attains to the essence of things and finds one's Self-this is supreme happiness. When it is found, nothing else remains to be found; the sense of want will not awaken anymore, and the heart's torment will be stilled forever. Do not be satisfied with fragmentary happiness, which is invariably interrupted by shocks and blows of fate; but become complete, and having attained to perfection, be YOURSELF.

Anandamayi Ma

Each thing tends to move towards its own nature. I always desire happiness which is my true nature. My nature is never a burden to me. Happiness is never a burden to me, whilst sorrow is.

Adi Shankara

Form as a goal always ends in formalism. For this striving is directed not towards an inside, but towards an outside. But only a living inside has a living outside.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

What whites have rarely had to think about—because being the dominant group, we are so used to having our will done, with a little effort at least—is that maybe the point is not victory, however much we all wish to see justice attained and injustice routed. Maybe our redemption comes from the struggle itself. Maybe it is in the effort, the striving for equality and freedom that we become human.

Tim Wise

You have to find something that you want to accomplish, that you want to achieve. You want to drop 15 pounds. You want to be able to run four miles. There has to be some goal that you set for yourself and, after you've reached that goal, you set a new one. You always have to be shooting for something, striving for something.

Larry Fitzgerald

Never will I pursue happiness, because it is not a goal, just a by-product, and there is no happiness in having or in getting, only in giving.

Og Mandino

Throughout my athletic career, the overall goal was always to be a better athlete than I was at the moment – whether next week, next month or next year. The improvement was the goal. The medal was simply the ultimate reward for achieving that goal.