Happiness isn’t always easy to pin down, but these happy quotes can help you cultivate a greater sense of ease.

There’s no magic trick to finding happiness, nor is there a single path that leads there. In fact, happiness is more often a by-product of our actions, rather than an end result.

Happiness is also more than just a fleeting emotion: by practicing positive thinking and affirmations, you can make a difference in your emotional and physical wellbeing.

In fact, a 2022 study found that high levels of optimism were associated with greater longevity.

One way to boost your mood is to keep a gratitude journal of happy moments throughout your day, so that you can look back at them when you’re feeling low.

During life’s most challenging moments, it can be especially difficult to imagine a light at the end of the tunnel. There may not be a one-size-fits-all guide to happiness, but there are plenty of ways to find fulfillment on even your lowest days.

When you just need a little reminder to keep going, these happy quotes provide the perfect pick-me-up.

Happy quotes to brighten your day

• “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ― Dalai Lama

• “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust

• “Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

• “It’s the moments that I stopped just to be, rather than do, that have given me true happiness.” — Richard Branson

• “You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.” — Joyce Meyer

• “People always say, ‘But you always look so happy.’ Well that’s Botox! Nobody’s happy all the time. But I work hard at it.” — Dolly Parton

• “True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”­ ― Helen Keller

• “Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

• “The only thing that will make you happy is being happy with who you are, and not who people think you are.” — Goldie Hawn

• “Don’t ruin a good today by thinking about a bad yesterday. Let it go.” ― Hoda Kotb, “I Really Needed This Today: Words to Live By”

• “The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.” — Mark Twain

• “Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you’ll start to see a big difference in your life.” — Yoko Ono

• “There is only one enduring happiness in life—to live for others.” — Leo Tolstoy

• “A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.” — Bernard de Fontenelle

• “It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.” — Charles Spurgeon

• “The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.” — Epictetus

• “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

• “I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion.” — Dalai Lama

• “True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.” — Ben Jonson

• “Want nothing but the best for your friends because when your friends are happy and successful, it’s probably going to be easier for you to be happy.” — Roxane Gay, “Bad Feminist”

• “Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower and draws all good things towards you.” — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

• “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” — Albert Camus

• “Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.” — Roy T. Bennet, “The Light in the Heart”

• “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” — Maya Angelou

• “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” — Robert Louis Stevenson, “Happy Thought”

• “Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

• “When unhappy, one doubts everything; when happy, one doubts nothing.”― Joseph Roux

• “If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you.” — Lao Tzu

• “Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.” — Daphne du Maurier, “Rebecca”

• “Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.” — Mary Lou Retton

• “If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.” — Dolly Parton

• “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.” —  Martha Washington

• “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”― Mahatma Gandhi

• “No medicine cures what happiness cannot.”― Gabriel García Márquez

• “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” ― Sylvia Plath, “The Bell Jar”

• “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.” — L.M. Montgomery, “Anne of Green Gables”

• “Happiness is like the mountain summit. It is sometimes hidden by clouds, but we know it is there.” — Helen Keller

• “Let anyone who comes to you go away feeling better and happier.” ― Mother Teresa

• “I’d far rather be happy than right any day.” — Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

• “I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love”

• “One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.” — Gwendolyn Brooks

• “You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes.” ―Lauren Oliver, “Delirium”

• “Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ― Robert Brault

• “I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.” ― Drew Barrymore

• “I would always rather be happy than dignified.” — Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre”

• “The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” — Chuck Palahniuk

• “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ― Dalai Lama

• “Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.” ― Steve Maraboli

• “We should always make time for the things we like. If we don’t, we might forget how to be happy.” ― T.J. Klune, “The House in the Cerulean Sea”

• “The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” — Ashley Montagu

• “There is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” — Amanda Gorman

• “We’re all rough drafts of the people we’re still becoming.” — Bob Goff

• “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”― Abraham Lincoln

• “The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.” — Louisa May Alcott

• “Unbroken happiness is a bore: It should have ups and downs.”―Molière

This article was originally published on TODAY.com