Waiting for someone else to make you happy is the best way to be sad.

We are our choices.

It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.

Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or good or joy worth having.

We are free up to the point of choice, then the choice controls the chooser.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full resources that are within thy reach.

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.

No man is born unto himself alone; who lives unto himself, he lives to none.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Benevolence is man’s mind, and righteousness is man’s path.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the small man seeks is in others.

If you compromise your own conscience, you will weaken your conscience. Soon your conscience will fail to guide you and you never will have real wealth based on peace of mind.

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?

Unless above himself he can erect himself, how poor a thing is man!

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.

You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you do or as fast. There is a time when you didn't know what you know today.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

The higher you soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.

Why has government been instituted? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason & justice without constraint.

In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.

The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.

Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful.

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.

If you have no time for prayer and meditation, you will have lots of time for sickness and trouble.

Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment. Fully alive, fully aware.