A Quote by Joseph B. Wirthlin

Those who make happiness the chief objective of life are bound to fail, for happiness is a by-product rather than an end in itself.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

Quote Topics

Bound By-Product Chief End Fail Happiness Itself Life Make Objective Product Rather Than Those

Quote Author

Joseph B. Wirthlin
American - Businessman
June 11, 1917 - December 1, 2008

Happiness is a by-product rather than an end in itself. It pops into your life unbidden, and then tends to pop out again. I'm on record as being depressive. It is related to winter.

Monty Don

When you're Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don't need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.

Marci Shimoff

Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living.

Haim Ginott

Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith.

Sam Shoemaker

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

John Stuart Mill

If there ever was a pursuit which stultified itself by its very conditions, it is the pursuit of pleasure as the all-sufficing end of life. Happiness cannot come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done. To do that duty you need to have more than one trait. From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.

Theodore Roosevelt

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

George Bernard Shaw

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness, which this world affords.

William Samuel Johnson

If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul.

Hugh Black

Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.

Helen Keller

Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment of worthy causes.

Norman Vincent Peale

Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don't find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings you the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run.

David Leonhardt

I think the difference between finding happiness, or moments of happiness, is how you choose to interpret things. That's a rather shocking responsibility. That we're responsible for our own happiness. It's not those around us.

Natascha McElhone

Profit is a by-product of work; happiness is its chief product.

Henry Ford

Happiness is a by-product. It is not a primary product of life. It is a thing which you suddenly realize you have because you're so delighted to be doing something which perhaps has nothing whatever to do with happiness.