Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.

Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.

You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there…

The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him – in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society and the like so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.

My philosophy has never brought me a sixpence; but it has spared me many an expense.

Riches are like sea water: the more you drink, the thirstier you become; and the same is true of fame.

Wealth is nowhere more at home than in the merchant class because merchants look upon money only as a means of further gain, just as a workman regards his tools so they try to preserve and increase it by using it.

What everyone most aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to himself; and how much more is this the case in politics.

Respect is paid to age because old people have necessarily shown in the course of their lives whether or not they have been able to maintain their integrity. Young people have not yet been tested.

When we come to see how superficial and futile are most people’s thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how perverse their opinions; we will understand that to lay great value upon what other people say is to pay them too much honor.

Wife and children I have not considered among a man's possessions: he is rather in their possession.

If you stroke a cat, it will purr; if you praise a man, a sweet expression of delight will appear on his face even though the praise is a palpable lie.

The most essential factor in happiness is health... the greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness

Deeply rooted in human nature is the mistaken belief that the ultimate goal for all our effort is gaining greater respect from other people… set limits on this great weakness and susceptibility to public opinion.

To greatly increase your happiness, just realize the simple truth that the value and the meaningfulness of our lives is within and not based on external factors.

Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

What a man is and has in himself is the only immediate and direct factor in his happiness and welfare.

in the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met, upon the kind and degree of our general susceptibility.

nothing contributes so little to happiness as riches, or so much as health.