The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

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

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

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.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

I said that America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation, and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners.

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

We’re in the last days, man – I truly, in my heart, believe that. It’s written. I could go on with biblical situations and things my grandma told me. But it’s about being at peace with myself and making good with the people around me.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

I like to make people feel happy and superior in their reaction towards my appearance.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Always do whatever’s next.

More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other’s well-being, is source of happiness.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Solitude is independence.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

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.

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

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.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.