Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Grow in the root of all grace, which is faith. Believe God’s promises more firmly than ever. Allow your faith to increase in its fullness, firmness, and simplicity.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

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!

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature.

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

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.

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

I love a natural look in pictures.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The real world is risky territory for people with generosity of spirit. Beware.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

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

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

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

I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

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.