When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

Our pleasures were simple – they included survival.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

I am happy and I’m single.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

When I came to Johannesburg from the countryside, I knew nobody, but many strangers were very kind to me. I then was dragged into politics, and then, subsequently, I became a lawyer.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

A true man hates no one.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest ‚weaknesses‘; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‚Oh no, it’s on the house.‘

I have a big gay and lesbian following and they’ve been very loyal and kind to me.

Children make your life important.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

I always think if you are asking somebody for something it is a good idea to give them something first.

Homework’s hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, ‚Okay.‘ And then I sit down and they say, ‚It’s math.‘ ‚No! Not math! English, history, anything!‘

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

The good man is the friend of all living things.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

I’m one of the luckiest people on earth.

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows?

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Hatred is self-punishment.

Power means happiness; power means hard work and sacrifice.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Laughter is America’s most important export.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

No one has ever become poor by giving.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.