Selected wellbeing quotes

1. Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it....

2. 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.

3. Life is an incurable condition: the only known treatment is to try to keep the patient comfortable.

4. The longer I live, the less chance I'll ever recover from what life keeps doing to me.

5. The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

6. Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.

7. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

8. I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.

9. I have other duties equally sacred ... Duties to myself.

10. A man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and prosperous being; and happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer of the man with his surroundings.

11. I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.

12. Happiness and love are just a choice away.

13. When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

14. O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife.

15. For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

16. Music is a whole oasis in my head. The creation process is so personal and fulfilling.

17. If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.

18. Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.

19. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

20. It's your unlimited power to care and to love that can make the biggest difference in the quality of your life.

21. The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

22. The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

23. 'A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.'

24. 'In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.'

25. The less you want, the richer you are. The more you need in order to be happy, the more miserable you'll be.

26. I've realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and don't trust my instincts, that's when I get in trouble.

27. All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

28. Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point. (181)

29. I married a wonderful doctor, and I was very happy-period.

30. I was feeling everything too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes.

31. We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.

32. A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

33. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

34. 'Goodness,' I babbled, 'but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you're not going to feel any better all day'.

35. Everyone needs a hug. It changes your metabolism.

36. I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace- a connection to what matters.

37. Awakener, come! Fiing wide the gate of an eternal year, The April of that glad new heavens and earth Which shall grow out of these, as spring-tide grows Slow out of winter's breast. Let Thy wide hand Gather us all - with none left out (O God! Leave Thou out none!) from the east and from the west. Loose Thou our burdens: heal our sicknesses; Give us one heart, one tongue, one faith, one love. In Thy great Oneness made complete and strong - To do Thy work throughout the happy world - Thy world, All-merciful, Thy perfect world.

38. Tar De livslognen fra et gennemsnitsmenneske, sa tar De lykken fra ham med det samme.

39. Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with.

40. If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it. (170)

41. If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.

42. Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money.

43. The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.

44. What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams ... and we search in vain for their original ... Much would have been gained if through timely advice and instruction young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.

45. The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

46. The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.

47. The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.

48. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

49. Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

50. A man who must separate himself from his neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in much the same case with one who requires to take opium for the same purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the world, do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure enjoyment of existence.

51. I like not knowing what's happening out there -- who's doing what, how they were, what the box office was. Even when I'm in the soup bowl of Hollywood, I just play Barbies and hang out with the kiddies. (2004)

52. Being with Vanessa and having children has made things very easy and clear for me. There's nothing dark about my world anymore. I watch our son and daughter playing around the house or learning new things and I wonder what on earth could be more beautiful than that. (2004)

53. I feel like a million tonight. But one at a time.

54. I have always believed that exercise is the key not only to physical health but to peace of mind.

55. I live in a 9 million dollar turd.

56. I like warming my butt by the fire.

57. To me, life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside.

58. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

59. True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.

60. Poor indeed must thou be, if around thee Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw-

61. Be grateful