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

You should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.

We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown – and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path.

Don’t ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission.

There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.

It is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them.

It is far better to render beings in your car competent than to protect them.

Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.

You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you are always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations – in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick.

Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance.

You’re not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!

Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.

You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.

Who cares if you are the prime minister of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States?

The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.

Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived.

I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

Major brands don’t know what to do with happy customers. They make it hard for customers to say thanks and way too often companies don’t celebrate and embrace customers’ positive gestures.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both of suffering and bliss