Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources. Various research groups, including Positive psychology, endeavor to apply the scientific method to answer questions about what "happiness" is, and how we might attain it.
Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a good life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness in this sense was used to translate the Greek Eudaimonia, and is still used in virtue ethics. Happiness economics suggests that measures of public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic measures when evaluating the success of public policy.
Read more about Happiness: Scientific Views, Philosophical Views, Economic Views, Measures of Happiness
Famous quotes containing the word happiness:
“For an instant I see the sky, the different skies, then they turn to faces, agonies, loves, the different loves, happiness too, yes there was that too, unhappily.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“The hour when you say, “What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)