Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

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

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Where thou art, that is home.

Being happy is a matter of personal taste.

Prime time for men is, say, 35 to 45. Then they level off and fall off.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

I listen to these comparisons with Cristiano Ronaldo, I’ll be happy and then forget it in five seconds.

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

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself.

Medicines are only fit for old people.

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

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

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.

As you get older, you’re not afraid of doubt. Doubt isn’t running the show. You take out all the self-agonizing.

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

I’ve been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It’s natural.

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

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

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

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.

The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

The exercise of benevolence is joy to loving hearts: the more pain it costs, the more joy it is. Kind actions make us happy, and in such joy we find communion with the great heart of Jesus.

As I approached my 95th birthday, I was burdened to write a book that addressed the epidemic of ‚easy believism.‘ There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works, they are going to Heaven.

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.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

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

Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.

We should purify our innate well of contentment – what a wonderful expression – and then external things will be in harmony with us.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

I never – you know also one of the things that would save me for a man my age, it was not that easy to lose that much weight and fall down and look like something draped.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you, you will be neither successful nor happy.

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.