“Much of happiness is hope.”

If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.

It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.

The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.

One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.

And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.

If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends.

Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word.

In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.

You remember the past not so that it is “accurately recorded,” to say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.

Aristotle defined virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life.

But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well.

It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world – a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one – is to fix yourself.

Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.

People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves.

Always place your becoming above your current being.

Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe, or strong?

He who is not happy with little will never be happy with much.

I do not need drugs to be a genius, do not take a genius to be human, but I need your smile to be happy.

Joy is not in things, it is in us.

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

Contentment makes poor men rich, Discontent makes rich men poor.

Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy.

Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.