The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Fight with a happy heart.

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

People have different emotional levels. Especially when you’re young.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

There’s plenty about God that I don’t understand and can’t explain. But I come back to my core belief that God is good, that He’s for us.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.

Exercise is really important to me – it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.

I’ve had sleep paralysis.

I’m kind of claustrophobic… It’s not even like enclosed spaces. It’s like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can’t get out.

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases – one was Alzheimer’s, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer’s.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

There’s a scripture that says, ‚A merry heart doeth good like medicine.‘ I think that’s true, too.

One good thing about acting in film is that it’s good therapy.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.

In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to Spirit.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.