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

All the awards in the world, you can get into all the nightclubs, they’ll send you the nicest clothes. Nothing better than walking into your dad’s restaurant and seeing a smile on his face and knowing that your mom and dad and your sister are real proud of you.

Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

Confidence is always a good thing to have going into the weekend. Especially where it’s quite difficult to put the lap together.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

I prefer to praise people and the world rather than criticize them and it.

Money can’t buy life.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?

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.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Without discipline, there’s no life at all.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

In this great country, we celebrate success. We don’t want to penalize those who have done well.

Fight with a happy heart.

What’s right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity – intellect and resources – to do some thing about them.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

I always knew that St. Jude was an amazing organization but meeting the kids and seeing how the hospital works first hand was truly beautiful. It doesn’t feel like a regular hospital all dreary and sad. It’s a colorful, beautiful, comfortable, fun place to live and the energy is wonderful.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

People want to feel hopeful.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.

There’s a scripture that says, ‚A merry heart doeth good like medicine.‘ I think that’s true, too.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

I love imperfections.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

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.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Whatever role I play is a positive role; it’s a strong role. Never negative.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken. More: You have ceded them power.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.