It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

I’ve never considered musical equipment very sacred.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

No matter what, I always make it home for Christmas. I love to go to my Tennessee Mountain Home and invite all of my nieces and nephews and their spouses and kids and do what we all like to do – eat, laugh, trade presents and just enjoy each other… and sometimes I even dress up like Santa Claus!

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

Most of the time, I’m not even working; I’m just helping people, because I feel that I am too lucky.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.

All the awards in the world, you can get into all the nightclubs, they’ll send you the nicest clothes. Nothing better than walking into your dad’s restaurant and seeing a smile on his face and knowing that your mom and dad and your sister are real proud of you.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, ‚Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.‘

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

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.‘

The label ‚liberal‘ or ‚conservative,‘ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‚Iolanthe.‘ It goes, ‚Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.‘ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

To try to become happy is to try to build a machine with no other specifications than it shall run noiselessly.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

It is a joy to be an artist, but it doesn’t mean very much unless that work is somehow useful in some way and contributes to others.

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

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

It’s a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don’t sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

Giving is true having.

God wants to use you to make other people happy! And the happier you make others, the happier you will be because you reap what you sow.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

Little things affect little minds.

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.

When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

There is nothing I fear more than waking up without a program that will help me bring a little happiness to those with no resources, those who are poor, illiterate, and ridden with terminal disease.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

I was saluted by Alex Ferguson when I was subbed and that made me very happy.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.