To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

I work very hard, but when God opens that door for you – when life opens that door for you, I should say – I think it’s important to be giving, to return the love back.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

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.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

I knew I was blessed with a gift of having both parents.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

I did not, thank the Lord, have to have a hysterectomy.

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

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

When I give somebody something and see their face, it just makes me so happy.

I think that success is having fun.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

Where thou art, that is home.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern… No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

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.