Pursuit Quotes

The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness—whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or songs.

work happiness vocation career

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

charm possessions

Riches are always over estimated [sic]; the enjoyment they give is more in the pursuit than the possession.

wealth enjoyment

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.  Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us [on] a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.

happiness

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

happiness

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

rights happiness

Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit.

happiness

Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness.

happiness

Passion is the relentless pursuit of those life-enhancing activities or experiences that give our souls meaning.

passion

When I behold what pleasure is pursuit,
What life, what glorious eagerness it is,
Then mark how full possession falls from this,
How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit.

possessions

To save the mind from preying inwardly upon itself, it must be encouraged to some outward pursuit. There is no other way to elude apathy, or escape discontent; none other to guard the temper from that quarrel with itself, which ultimately ends in quarreling with all mankind.

It is not so much the pursuit of happiness as the happiness of pursuit that is most likely to yield gratification, and then only occasionally.