Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

I could give a flying flip about doing promo because, no disrespect, nobody put me in the position that I’m in.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

You may never get to that perfect world that you’re waiting for where everything’s going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.

Simplicity is a key to avoiding complication. Part of the definition of simplicity is ‚not complex or complicated; sincere.‘

You can be happy where you are.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

I’m not looking to get away from anything. I like what I’ve done. I like what I get to do and I enjoy working with my friends. I loved those movies, but this is incredible.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

I used to wonder if it was God’s plan that I should be alone for so much of my life. But I found peace. I found happiness within people and the world.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

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

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.

There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

I was raised to be independent.

Frustration is a sign I am acting independently. The more you try your own way, the tighter the doors will stay closed.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

I have heard of Texas pioneers living without bread or anything made from the cereals for months without suffering, using the breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind, they had plenty in the good old days when life, though considered less safe, was fussed over the less.

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

If you give a person a fish, they’ll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they’ll fish for a lifetime.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

I got my own back.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

I’m not looking for sympathy at all.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

My rich dad believed we should all learn to take care of ourselves.

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

God wants to bless us where we are.

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.