“Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.”

A well begun is half ended.

I expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.

I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.

It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.

The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one’s movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.

I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.

I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.

One’s mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.

The day is done. I’m having fun. I think I’m dumb. Or maybe just happy.

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.

As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you’ll know that your pure within and will find happiness once more.

She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness.

To be wedded to an idea may be, after all, the holiest and happiest of marriages.

Call no man happy till he is dead.

I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.

I used to wonder if it was God’s plan that I should be alone for so much of my life. But I found peace. I found happiness within people and the world.