The days are long, but the years are short.
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Nothing,? wrote Tolstoy, ’can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.
I had everything I could possibly want – yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had.
Because money permits a constant stream of luxuries and indulgences, it can take away their savor, and by permitting instant gratification, money shortcuts the happiness of anticipation. Scrimping, saving, imagining, planning, hoping – these stages enlarge the happiness we feel.
A willingness to be pleased requires modesty and even innocence – easy to deride as mawkish and sentimental.
When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act.
If I pretend to myself that I’m different from the way I truly am, I’m going to make choices that won’t make me happy.
Happiness: “You Bring Your Own Weather To The Picnic.”
Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self.
Turns out that people who try new things, go new places, learn new skills, etc. are happier. This can be tough, because novelty and challenge also bring frustration and irritation – but if you can push through that, novelty and challenge can bring enormous happiness rewards.
Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.
When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure – but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.
In general, religious people seem to be happier than non-religious people – under various definitions of “religiosity,” such as church attendance or professed spiritual beliefs.