Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

The happiest moments are when we sit down and we feel the presence of our brothers and sisters, lay and monastic, who are practicing walking and sitting meditation.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

As long as I am playing competitive football I am happy.

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

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

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

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 don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

No one but a fool is always right.

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.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

Obama’s primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

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

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

It could be – and it has been argued, in my view rather plausibly, though neuroscientists don’t like it – that neuroscience for the last couple hundred years has been on the wrong track.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Off with you! You’re a happy fellow, for you’ll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that!

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

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.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

I definitely don’t think that money can buy you love. It can buy you affection but certainly not love.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

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

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘