But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

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.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

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.

I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.

I had a lovers quarrel with the world.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

Love always ends differently and it always begins differently – especially with me.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

My wife and I are very affectionate.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

I think the word rich is all relative.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

My faith helps me overcome such negative emotions and find my equilibrium.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

I believe when it comes to love, there’s something intangible about who we are attracted to, and I don’t think I have a pattern.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

Love is a state of being.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Number of people have said to me, after hearing your thinking, their mind becomes much more happier.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

I just want people to be the best thems and live the happiest lives possible.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.