Bobby McFerrin

I have a lot of albums yet to do.

I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy, it’s only necessary to be rich.

Relinquishing the delusional hope that we can or must be flawless allows us to seek happiness in the place it can be found: Our real, messy, imperfect experience

You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

I’ve found happiness in my work, but not in my private life. I had to take from my private life to make my public life successful. I had to make a lot of sacrifices. I was happy in Cardiff. I had a great time. Every Thursday there was a factory club; darts, dancing. I was happy until success entered my life, and then it was all downhill. Success spoilt me. It took away my happiness. My success became a barrier with my family. They couldn’t relate to me, and I couldn’t relate to them.

A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.

Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.

How often, for example, have you said or heard someone else say, “All I really want in this life is to be happy”? It sounds like a commonsense answer, but as a life goal, it is destined for failure. My dog, Barkley, wants to be happy. Does that mean that the two of you want the same things? I don’t think so. I’ll bet everything I own that you and Barkley define happiness very differently. So unless you’re willing to settle for someone scratching your belly and letting you sleep under the coffee table, you might want to be a little more precise about what you as a unique individual really want.

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.