Quotes from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“There’s a Tibetan saying: ‘Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“The more time you spend thinking about yourself, the more suffering you will experience.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“When you are grateful,' Brother Steindl-Rast explained, 'you are not fearful, and when you are not fearful, you are not violent. When you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people and respectful to all people. The grateful world is a world of joyful people. Grateful people are joyful people. A grateful world is a happy world.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. It simply depends on the attitudes, the perspectives, and the reactions we bring to situations and to our relationships with other people. When it comes to personal happiness there is a lot that we as individuals can do.” •”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Why be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use of being unhappy if it cannot be remedied?”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn't pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that's why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Seek to be an oasis of caring and concern as you live your life.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“There are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not: How do I escape? It is: How can I use this as something positive?”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“the three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“What the Dalai Lama and I are offering,” the Archbishop added, “is a way of handling your worries: thinking about others. You can think about others who are in a similar situation or perhaps even in a worse situation, but who have survived, even thrived. It does help quite a lot to see yourself as part of a greater whole.” Once again, the path of joy was connection and the path of sorrow was separation. When we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Discovering more joy does not, save us from th inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Suffering is inevitable, they said, but how we respond to that suffering is our choice. Not even oppression or occupation can take away this freedom to choose our response. Right”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“According to Lyubomirsky, the three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous. These”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“I think that the scientists are right,” the Dalai Lama concluded. “People who are always laughing have a sense of abandon and ease. They are less likely to have a heart attack than those people who are really serious and who have difficulty connecting with other people. Those serious people are in real danger.” “We”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Something is lacking. As one of the seven billion human beings, I believe everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world. We need, ultimately, to have a greater concern for others’ well-being. In other words, kindness or compassion, which is lacking now. We must pay more attention to our inner values. We must look inside.” He”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Marriages, even the best ones—perhaps especially the best ones—are an ongoing process of spoken and unspoken forgiveness. •”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“One of my practices comes from an ancient Indian teacher. He taught that when you experience some tragic situation, think about it. If there’s no way to overcome the tragedy, then there is no use worrying too much. So I practice that. (The Dalai Lama was referring to the eighth-century Buddhist master Shantideva, who wrote, “If something can be done about the situation, what need is there for dejection? And if nothing can be done about it, what use is there for being dejected?”)”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Meditative practice allows us to quiet the distracting thoughts and feelings so that we can perceive reality, and respond to it more skillfully. The ability to be present in each moment is nothing more and nothing less than the ability to accept the vulnerability, discomfort, and anxiety of everyday life. “With”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“courage: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance. Reflecting”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Joy is the reward, really, of seeking to give joy to others. When you show compassion, when you show caring, when you show love to others, do things for others, in a wonderful way you have a deep joy that you can get in no other way. You can’t buy it with money. You can be the richest person on Earth, but if you care only about yourself, I can bet my bottom dollar you will not be happy and joyful. But when you are caring, compassionate, more concerned about the welfare of others than about your own, wonderfully, wonderfully, you suddenly feel a warm glow in your heart, because you have, in fact, wiped the tears from the eyes of another. “Why”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“There’s a Tibetan saying: ‘Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.’” There”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“As the Dalai Lama put it, “In fact, taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life.” The”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“You must not hate those who do harmful things. The compassionate thing is to do what you can to stop them--for they are harming themselves as well as those who suffer from their actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

About the author

Popular quotes

“How strange and unnatural destiny is. I married a man eight years younger than myself, and according to the law of nature I should have been the first to die, with Him at my side. Instead, it was my destiny to witness His death.'
In speaking of Giuseppe, she always wrote Him, with a capital letter. Her style was prolix, repetitive, but with a certain academic nobility; and her handwriting was elongated, fine, even elegant. (However, in her final decline, her letters grew shorter and her written words, all shaky and twisted, groped across the page, uncertain of their direction.)”
― Elsa Morante, quote from History

“War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what’s it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
-
Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald’s and Disney and The Gap and L’Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, ‘OK’? Hitler needed marketing, that’s all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving softly in the breezes, and the tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo

“It was an article of faith to the Romans that they were the most morally upright people in the world. How else was the size of their empire to be explained? Yet they also knew that the Republic's greatness carried its own risks. To abuse it would be to court divine anger. Hence the Roman's concern to refute all charges of bullying, and to insist they had won their empire purely in self-defense.”
― Tom Holland, quote from Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

“What do I have to do to convince you I’m the one you should run to, not away from? Tell me and I’ll do it.”
― Lisa Renee Jones, quote from Infinite Possibilities

“[Merlin - on realizing the he'd killed a man with his magic.]

It was easy. It shouldn't have been so easy to do something so big. ... So final...

[Gaius] ...Oh Merlin! With magic or without it is always dreadfully easy to do something so big. And bigger. This is the terrible terrible lesson which we never learn from history. Hurting other people is never hard, even though it should be..”
― FayJay, quote from The Student Prince

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.