happiness

It turns out that what money buys has rapidly diminishing emotional returns ... As long as we're not destitute, happiness depends less on getting what we want than appreciating what we already have.

We remember though all the firelit glowOf a great hearth's gleam and glare,And we looked for a space at each happy faceAnd the love that was written there.

Intent not followed by action is an insult to your design. Decide what you want, create a plan, and get your ass out there!

Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances.

A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.

I feel as though I should say something profound, or enact some rite, or trade something to make it official. I want to transfer some trinket which would allow me to say that she's my girl, some kind of currency that proves to people that she likes me back. Something that would permit me to think about her all the time without feeling guilty or helpless or hopelessly far away. I guess I'm just so excited, I want to cage this thing like a tiny red bird so if can't fly away, so it stays the same, so it's still there the next time. For keeps, like a coin in your pocket. Like a peach pit from Mad Jack Lionel's tree. Like scribbled words in a locked suitcase. A bright balloon to tie to your bedpost. And you want to hug it close, hold it, but not so tight it bursts.

The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.

If you think happiness is a rare bird you won't see much of it.

Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.

Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.

Happiness is a decision and so as Love. If you decide to be happy then you're happy. If you decide to love then you love.

The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.

To be happy, make others happy.

It's no shame in reaching second or third base if you aimed for first base.

Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed."If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'dbeen kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed,deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now.

It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart__ever the sensation of the moment.

Beliefs are not related to religion but they are basically about who you are.

That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.