How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

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.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

There is little success where there is little laughter.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

I’ve run the Boston Marathon 6 times before. I think the best aspects of the marathon are the beautiful changes of the scenery along the route and the warmth of the people’s support. I feel happier every time I enter this marathon.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

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

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

History should be written as philosophy.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.

I only want my work to make people happy.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

I think happiness is a goal all of us can agree on. Let’s face it – we all would like to be happy.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Happy the people whose annals are vacant.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, ‚why don’t I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,‘ and they abandon their values.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.