We were poor, but we smiled.

But now, being a parent, I go home and see my son and I forget about any mistake I ever made or the reason I’m upset. I get home and my son is smiling or he comes running to me. It has just made me grow as an individual and grow as a man.

Money ain’t everything.

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Poverty is the mother of crime.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

Whether we’re happy with our circumstances or not, giving God praise is so important.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

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

I think there’s every reason this 21st century will be much happier.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me – spiritually and financially.

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

Predicting rain doesn’t count. Building arks does.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

I used to wonder if it was God’s plan that I should be alone for so much of my life. But I found peace. I found happiness within people and the world.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

I think it’s OK to be confident in yourself.

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money… they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

There’s nothing I have to hide or defend. I’m gonna live my life. And there are times when people wanna try to attack me, and I don’t know why, but they will. And that’s okay.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

Good luck has its storms.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

Fear is real, but so is love.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

What I love best in life is new starts.

Every wall is a door.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.