What is happiness?

As I waited through checkpoint after checkpoint, I was sorry I’d left Nurana and visited the other part of Turkmenistan – the ugly, absurd, fucked up, government-controlled part. I was pissed off for days. It took a long, sunny afternoon of sitting under a mulberry tree playing my guitar and teaching Döwlet a Woody Guthrie song while Kümüsh and Altyn gathered sun-warmed apricots and plums nearby, the smell of simmering plov drifting over from the kitchen, to remind me why I’d come to love Turkmenistan.

--Sam Tranum

What is happiness?

Happiness is a by-product of being alive.

--unknown source

What is happiness?

I remember, with intense pleasure, the sound of my parents singing together as we drove. Mother, who had a beautiful voice, would start the song, and Dad would join in. Their favorites were "Danny Boy", "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder," and "When You and I Were Young, Maggie," and we three kids in the backseat listened to them and sometimes chimed in as well, feeling totally happy and secure. The word "connected," so commonly used today, hardly describes our contentment, our sense that we were exactly where we wanted to be.

--Robert Lawrence Smith

What is happiness?

Happiness happens when we learn to expect nothing but appreciate everything.

(see also How to be happy?)

--unknown source