A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

Sometimes I try to just sit at home and do something calmer and simpler and just be in my life. You know, not trying to solve a lot of things at once.

Hawaii is paradise. It sounds cheesy to say it, but there’s music in the air there.

I live a reasonably simple life, off the beaten track.

You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.