happiness

hap·py  (hp)

adj. hap·pi·er, hap·pi·est

1. Characterized by good luck; fortunate.

2. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy.

3. Being especially well-adapted; felicitous: a happy turn of phrase.

4. Cheerful; willing: happy to help.

5.

a. Characterized by a spontaneous or obsessive inclination to use something. Often used in combination: trigger-happy.

b. Enthusiastic about or involved with to a disproportionate degree. Often used in combination: money-happy; clothes-happy.

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[Middle English, from hap, luck; see hap.]

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happi·ly adv.

happi·ness n.

Synonyms: happy, fortunate, lucky, providential
These adjectives mean attended by luck or good fortune: a happy outcome; a fortunate omen; a lucky guess; a providential recovery. See Also Synonyms at glad¹.

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Happiness

See also attitudes; moods

ataraxia

a state of tranquility free from anxiety and emotional disturbance. — ataractic, ataraxic, adj.

athedonia

an inability to be happy. — athedonic, adj.

cheromania

an extreme love for gaiety.

cherophobia

an abnormal fear of gaiety.

eudemonics, eudaemonics

1. an art or means of acquiring happiness; eudemonism.
2. the theory of happiness. — eudemonia, n. — eudemonic, eudemonical, adj.

eudemonism, eudaemonism

Ethics. a moral system based upon the performance of right actions to achieve happiness. — eudemonist, eudaemonist, n.

euphoria, euphory

1. a state of happiness and well-being.
2. Psychiatry. an exaggerated state of happiness, with no foundation in truth or reality. — euphoric, adj.

jocundity

the quality or condition of being merry or cheerful. — jocund, adj.

jovialist

Obsolete, a person who leads a merry life.

joviality

1. the quality or state of being merry or jovial.
2. festivity.

jucundity

Obsolete. the condition or act of being pleasant.

macarism

the practice of making others happy through praise and felicitation. — macarize, v.

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Happiness 

See Also: CONTENTMENT, JOY, PLEASURE

1. All happiness is a chance encounter and at every moment presents itself to you like a beggar by the roadside —André Gide
2. The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick —Madame Swetchine

   See Also: DIFFICULTY

3. Dry happiness is like dry bread. We eat, but we do not dine —Victor Hugo

   In Les Miserables, the hero, Jean Valjean, continues: “I wish for the superfluous, for the useless, for the extravagant, for the too much, for that which is not good for anything.”

4. Ecstatic as a scientist who had just discovered the key to immortality —Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
5. Elated as though he had stumbled on a treasure —Brian Moore
6. A gay, light happiness, like bubbles in wine held up against the sun —Ben Ames Williams
7. Glowed with happiness, like a child with expectations of a birthday party —Frank Swinnerton
8. The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history —George Eliot
9. Happiness as wholesome as honey on the comb —John Braine
10. Happiness choked my throat like an anthem. It flowed through me like a river from the beginning of the column to its end —Aharon Megged
11. (In the midst of happiness grows a seed of unhappiness.) Happiness consumes itself like a flame. (It cannot burn forever) —August Strindberg
12. Happiness … descended upon her heart, like a cloud of morning dew in a dell of wild-flowers —Walter De La Mare
13. Happiness … filled her brain like wine —William Dean Howells
14. Happiness flits from branch to twig to branch like a hummingbird —Delmore Schwartz
15. Happiness is falling on us out of the sky … like a blanket of snow —Jean Giraudoux
16. Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts —Chinese proverb
17. Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated —Tryon Edwards
18. Happiness is like time and space; we make and measure it ourselves —George Du Maurier
19. Happiness, like air, is not something you can put in a bottle —Anon

    See Also: AIR

20. Happiness, like the pink and white anemones of my childhood, is a flower that must not be picked —Andre Maurois
21. The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent —Jean Baptiste Racine
22. Happiness struck her like a shower of rain —Eudora Welty
23. Happiness … was there like light seen through moving leaves, like touching a warm stone —Sumner Locke Elliott
24. Happy and thoughtless as an apple on a tree —George Garrett
25. Happy as a butterfly in a garden full of sunshine and flowers —Louisa May Alcott
26. Happy as a clam —American colloquialism, attributed to New England

    A variation of this found in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms is, “Happy as a clam at high water.”

27. Happy as a couple of linebackers after winning a high school game —Marge Piercy
28. Happy as a couple of cherrystone clams —George Garrett
29. Happy as a dog with a bone —Anon
30. Happy as a lover —William Wordsworth
31. (I am )happy as a mother whose good baby sleeps —May Sarton
32. Happy as a pig in clover —American colloquialism

    In the American army this gave way to “Being happy as a pig in shit.”

33. Happy as a robin when he trills —Anon American song “Love Letters”
34. Happy as a swallow —Richard Ford
35. Happy as a tick in a dog’s ear —Jay Parini
36. Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them —Sara Teasdale
37. He loved happiness like I love tea —Eudora Welty
38. When it [happiness] comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep —Willa Cather
39. I was high as taxes —Loren D. Estleman
40. I was like a river in flood … drowning in my own happiness, and buoyed up by it at the same time —Eugene Ionesco
41. Live together … as happily as two lobsters in a saucepan, two bugs on a muscle —Dylan Thomas

    See Also: RELATIONSHIPS

42. Looked like the sun at the zenith —Carlos Baker
43. Happy-looking as if he’s just heard the foreman say, “Not guilty” —William Slavens McNutt
44. Looking for happiness is like clutching the shadow or chasing the wind —Japanese proverb

    See Also: ELUSIVENESS

45. Looks like he is a kid holding his first puppy —John Wainwright
46. Moments of happiness hang like pearls on the finest silken thread, certain to be snapped, the pearls scattered away —Joan Chase
47. On the brink of our happiness we stop like someone on a drunk starting to weep —Galway Kinnell
48. The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
49. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn —Samuel Johnson, March 21, 1776
50. The vicissitudes of life touch him [a happy man] lightly, like the wind in the aspen-tree —Anton Chekhov
51. Wore his new happiness like an advertisement —Nancy Huddleston Packer

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hapless, happiness - Hapless means one is lacking hap, "good fortune, luck"; the words happy and happiness also have the root "hap."

See also related terms for luck.

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	happiness - state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy felicity emotional state, spirit - the state of a person's emotions (especially with regard to pleasure or dejection); "his emotional state depended on her opinion"; "he was in good spirits"; "his spirit rose" beatification, beatitude, blessedness - a state of supreme happiness radiance - an attractive combination of good health and happiness; "the radiance of her countenance" unhappiness - state characterized by emotions ranging from mild discontentment to deep grief
	2.	happiness - emotions experienced when in a state of well-being feeling - the experiencing of affective and emotional states; "she had a feeling of euphoria"; "he had terrible feelings of guilt"; "I disliked him and the feeling was mutual" bonheur - (French) happiness and good humor gladfulness, gladness, gladsomeness - experiencing joy and pleasure gaiety, merriment - a gay feeling rejoicing - a feeling of great happiness belonging - happiness felt in a secure relationship; "with his classmates he felt a sense of belonging" blitheness, cheerfulness - a feeling of spontaneous good spirits; "his cheerfulness made everyone feel better" contentment - happiness with one's situation in life sadness, unhappiness - emotions experienced when not in a state of well-being

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happiness

noun pleasure, delight, joy, cheer, satisfaction, prosperity, ecstasy, enjoyment, bliss, felicity, exuberance, contentment, wellbeing, high spirits, elation, gaiety, jubilation, merriment, cheerfulness, gladness, beatitude, cheeriness, blessedness, light-heartedness I think she was looking for happiness.
depression, distress, grief, misery, sadness, sorrow, misfortune, unhappiness, annoyance, despondency, low spirits

Quotations
"Happiness depends upon ourselves" [Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics]
"Happiness to me is wine,"
"Effervescent, superfine."
"Full of tang and fiery pleasure,"
"Far too hot to leave me leisure"
"For a single thought beyond it" [Amy Lowell Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds]
"Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self" [Iris Murdoch The Nice and the Good]
"To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others" [Albert Camus The Fall]
"I am happy and content because I think I am" [Alain René Lesage Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane]
"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so" [John Stuart Mill Autobiography]
"Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it" [Fyodor Dostoevsky A Diary of a Writer]
"In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it" [Franz Kafka The Collected Aphorisms]
"Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination" [Immanuel Kant Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics]
"Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things" [La Rochefoucauld Maxims]
"Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague" [Norman Douglas South Wind]
"Happiness lies in the fulfilment of the spirit through the body" [Cyril Connolly The Unquiet Grave]
"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it" [George Bernard Shaw Candida]
"What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree" [Sigmund Freud Civilization and its Discontents]
"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults" [Thomas Szasz The Second Sin]
"Nothing ages like happiness" [Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband]
"Happiness is no laughing matter" [Richard Whately Apophthegms]
"Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary" [Samuel Johnson The Adventurer]
"happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another" [Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary]
"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length" [Robert Frost The Witness Tree]

Translations

happiness [ˈhæpɪnɪs] N (= contentment) → felicidad f; (= cheerfulness) → alegría f
we wish you every happiness → te deseamos toda la felicidad del mundo
if you want to know real happiness → si quieres ser verdaderamente feliz

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happiness [ˈhæpinɪs] n → bonheur m

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happiness

n → Glück nt; (= feeling of contentment) → Zufriedenheit f; (= cheerfulness) → Heiterkeit f, → Fröhlichkeit f; the happiness of his expression → sein glücklicher or freudiger Gesichtsausdruck

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happiness [ˈhæpɪnɪs] n → felicità, contentezza, gioia

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happiness → سَعادة štěstí glæde Glück ευτυχία felicidad onni bonheur sreća felicità 幸福 행복 geluk lykke szczęście felicidade счастье lycka ความสุข mutluluk niềm hạnh phúc 快乐