True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That’s a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways.

I’m not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Too many people measure how successful they are by how much money they make or the people that they associate with. In my opinion, true success should be measured by how happy you are.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

You can be happy where you are.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

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

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

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China’s Communists.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

That’s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

As your career grows, the list of things that makes you happy should not become smaller, it should become bigger.

If you cry over a guy, then your friends can’t date him. It can’t even be considered.

Playing in MLS was a great experience. It has boosted my confidence and I feel I have matured as a player.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

By indignities men come to dignities.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.