Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

God doesn’t dwell in the wooden, stony or earthen idols. His abode is in our feelings, our thoughts.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

Fortunately there is more wealth in the world than there was at the time of the global economic crisis of 1929 – Chinese, Indian, Arab and Russian.

I’ve been very fortunate.

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

When I was an orphan, I was the richest kid at the orphanage because everyone else was complaining about not having anything. But when I discovered that you could get two cents for a Coca-Cola bottle, I would follow people around who were drinking it and ask them if they were almost through with it.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

The only passion that guides me is for the truth… I look at everything from this point of view.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

All of our problems start in our minds.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

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

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.

Working with our military community has been the biggest honor of my life.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused – in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened – by the recurrence of Christmas.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.

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.‘

Stupidly it should not be. It should be also nice. One must get along with that. Is however not necessary.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Life well spent is long.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

I don’t have emotional needs, only physical ones.

People just overshoot trying to find God. They’re going outside and trying everything. They don’t realize that it’s right inside themselves.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.