smiley face
In this representational image, 4,444 students from 25 schools in Gwalior, India, stand together and form a smiley face by holding colored cloths, Feb. 8, 2012. Getty Images

Tuesday is International Happiness Day, a United Nations-recognized celebration, which commemorates people's positive attitudes and efforts toward creating happier lives for themselves and for the world’s well-being.

"A profound shift in attitudes is underway all over the world," the day's official website reads. "People are now recognizing that 'progress' should be about increasing human happiness and well-being, not just growing the economy."

According to the U.N. General Assembly, happiness is considered a fundamental human goal and the best ways to achieve that include giving, appreciating, and exercising what is around you.

Whether you are in the mood or not on Tuesday, spend a minute to help yourself and others. Celebrate International Happiness Day by reading a few of the best and famous quotes about the feeling to make you smile, collected from GoodReads and BrainyQuote.

smiley balloon
In this representational photo, a happy face balloon is seen during day 3 of the Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival (Weekend 1) at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, April 16, 2017. Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Coachella
  1. "Happiness depends upon ourselves." — Aristotle
  2. "There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons." — Stephen Chbosky
  3. "Happiness is a warm puppy." — Charles M. Schulz
  4. "Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get." — W.P. Kinsella
  5. "The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up." — Mark Twain
  6. "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
  7. "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." — Mahatma Gandhi
  8. "We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same." — Anne Frank
  9. "We're all golden sunflowers inside." — Allen Ginsberg
  10. "The most important thing is to enjoy your life – to be happy – it’s all that matters." — Audrey Hepburn
  11. "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." — Abraham Lincoln
  12. "The only thing that will make you happy is being happy with who you are, and not who people think you are." — Goldie Hawn
  13. "Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There’s going to be stress in life, but it’s your choice whether you let it affect you or not." — Valerie Bertinelli
  14. "If you want to be happy, be." — Leo Tolstoy
  15. "Be happy. It’s one way of being wise." — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
  16. "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." — Dalai Lama
  17. "There are lots of people I admire and respect, but I don’t necessarily want to be like them. I’m too happy being myself." — James D’arcy
  18. "A well-spent day brings happy sleep." — Leonardo da Vinci
  19. "The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have." — Woody Allen
  20. "Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window- or break down a door." — Brooke Shields
  21. "Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness." — Immanuel Kant
  22. "It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man." — Benjamin Franklin
  23. "If you want a happy ending that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." — Orson Welles
  24. "The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it." — Mother Teresa
  25. "In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word." — Walt Whitman
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