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.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.

I think I have always had a little humor.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

I do not live on false promises. I cannot afford to live on bad advice.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Happy the people whose annals are vacant.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people’s happiness.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

Happiness doesn’t come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.

We become what we repeatedly do.

People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

I’m a genetic optimist.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

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

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

I just want to live happily ever after, every now and then.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ‚Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full.‘

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.