I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

I’m so happy because today I found my friends – they’re in my head.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

I don’t know if I could do this with the same energy, and in the same way – all the costume changes and glitter and hair and makeup – all the time. When I’m in my 50s, I kind of think I’ll want to be in a garden.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

I’m not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don’t like L.A., but I’m just a Northern California guy.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

There was a moment when designers draped in ermine would be reading Proust, or pretending to.

One of the things people don’t really recognise about the similarities between country and hip-hop is that they’re celebrations of pride in a lifestyle.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

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.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

Man lives for science as well as bread.

If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it’s cool that happens.

I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I’m still quite robust.

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

Maybe some people can wake up and play PlayStation all day, but that’s never been me.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

There’s nothing – I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

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

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

He has the most who is most content with the least.

The dieting wars have got to stop.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

This way of life is worth defending.

I’m not a nerd, obviously. Do I look like one? I’m not someone who sits at home and doesn’t like to go out, doesn’t like to watch movies. I like to live my life.

I find the difference, for me, between having no money and having quite a bit is that the bills get bigger. And that’s it. The lifestyle doesn’t change.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

Happy the people whose annals are vacant.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

I’m generous. I give good tips. It’s just – the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don’t want anything. I’m not a consumer. I don’t crave objects.

For greed all nature is too little.

In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to Spirit.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

I like talking. I like acting.

My music is a luxury.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I’m filthy rich!

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

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

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.