Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.
My philosophy is very much to encourage my children to forge their own success and happiness, even though that will undoubtedly involve much more modest levels of wealth creation.
I visited those friends who'd just had a baby, and she was washing dishes and he was cleaning the house, and I burst with happiness. And in their minds, they were in this terrible domestic rut.
We've all met those who seem to radiate happiness. They seem to smile more than others; they laugh more than others - just being around them makes us happier as well.
I always find the worst lies are told in relationships - I learned to never lie about your happiness in order to save someone's feelings from being hurt.
I always looked for a man to rescue me and bring me happiness. I bought into that myth, of course, and looked for my own Prince Charming.
Although Freud said happiness is composed of love and work, reality often forces us to choose love or work.
We have to make our own happiness, and we have to make our own decisions and play the hand that is dealt to us.
The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can't help it - can't help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it.
Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.
Every man judges his own happiness and satisfaction with life in terms of his possession or lack of possession of those things that he considers worthwhile and valuable.
We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.
When you take out individual initiative, individual responsibility, and the hope that every individual is born with, to better their lives, to climb the economic ladder, to pursue happiness, that is, in fact, a neoslavery.
With respect to the first of these obstacles, it has often been made a matter of grave complaint against Political Economists, that they confine their attention to Wealth, and disregard all consideration of Happiness or Virtue.
There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.
The older I get, the more I see that there really aren't huge zeniths of happiness or a huge abyss of darkness as much as there used to be. I tend to walk a middle ground.
