It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Making your dad happy is – especially for an Italian Catholic girl, I’ll tell you – it feels really good.

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.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

It was the wont of the immortal gods sometimes to grant prosperity and long impunity to men whose crimes they were minded to punish in order that a complete reverse of fortune might make them suffer more bitterly.

People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

If I had chosen the populist course, it would have been a breach of the trust placed in me by the people.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

Even an animal, if you show genuine affection, gradually trust develops… If you always showing bad face and beating, how can you develop friendship?

True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

I only want my work to make people happy.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

If someone lies, well, you had a choice to trust that person or not. I think the way my father raised me, well, he trusted everybody. And that worked for him.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.

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

The truth doesn’t hurt unless it ought to.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

Life is warfare.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I earned everything I’ve got.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

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

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.