A man who is satisfied both with what he has and what he hasn't, is happy.
Appreciation is like an insurance policy. It has to be renewed every now and then.
Appreciation is the lubricant of life.
Be thankful for small blessings.
The bigger ones are just taxed more.
Be thankful if you have a job a little harder than you like. A razor cannot be sharpened on a piece of velvet.
Count your garden by the flowers,
Never by the leaves that fall.
Count your days by golden hours,
Don't remember clouds at all.
Count your nights by stars, not shadows,
Count your life by smiles, not tears,
And, with joy on every birthday,
Count your age by friends, not years.
Do not confuse notoriety and fame with greatness. Many of the titled in today's world obtained their fame and fortunes outside their own merit.
On the other hand, I have met great people in the most obscure roles in life. For, you see, greatness is a measure of one's spirit, not a result of one's rank in human affairs. Nobody, least of all mere humans, confers greatness upon another, for it is not a price but an achievement. And greatness can crown the head of a janitor just as readily as it can come to someone of high rank.
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation. For when you come back to your work, your judgment will be surer, since to remain constantly at work, you lose power of judgment. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller, and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony or proportion is more readily seen.
Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.
Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.
Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
How much money do you have to have to be considered rich in today's society? $500,000? $1.5 million? $100 million?
If you can share any problem with your spouse, you're rich. If you can face your parents and believe you have given back to them even a hint of what they gave you, you're rich. If you can take an afternoon off to go boating or shopping with your friend, you're rich. If you can honestly say you have nothing to hide, you are really, really rich.
How wonderful are books! Messages to us from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
I am happy in having learned to distinguish between ownership and possession. Books, pictures, and all the beauty of the world belong to those who love and understand them - not usually to those who possess them. All of these things that I am entitled to I have - I own them by divine right. So I care not a bit who possesses them. I used to care very much and consequently was very unhappy.
I have found life an enchanting, active and sometimes a terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.
I have not much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it needs interpretation, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.
I have the happiness of the passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?
I talk to myself because I like dealing with a better class of people.
I think of music as a menu, I can't eat the same thing every day.
I would rather read slowly and explore all the dungeons and secret passages than be a speed reader who bounds from parapet to parapet and thinks he has seen the castle.
I would say to every person read with your pencil. Never pass a word, or an allusion, or a name you do not understand without marking it down for inquiry. Then go to your dictionary for the definition or explanation; go to the encyclopedia for information as to biographical or historical allusions. Never read about any country without having a map before you. This kind of study will fix things in your mind as no formal method of the schools ever will.
If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time. - Josh Billings.
If you spend all your time collecting money for fear of poverty, you are practicing poverty already.
In the old days there were fewer pleasures but more time to enjoy those we had.
It is better to desire the things we have than to have the things we desire.
It is not doing the thing we like to do,
but liking the thing we have to do,
that makes life wonderful.
It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.
It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.
It's the things in common that make relationships enjoyable, but it's the little differences that make them interesting.
"Life," said a woman, with a reputation for being popular - "life is a perpetual toothache."
In this vein the conversation went on: the familiar topics were discussed of work-troubles, epidemics, cancer, tuberculosis, and taxation.
Near me there sat a little old lady who was placidly drinking her tea, and taking no part in the melancholy chorus. "Well, I must say," she remarked, turning to me, and speaking in an undertone. "I must say I enjoy life."
"So do I," I whispered.
"When I enjoy things," she went on, "I know it. Eating, for instance, the sunshine, my hot-water bottle at night. Other people are always thinking of unpleasant things."
"It makes a difference," she added.
"All the difference in the world!" I answered.
Little Things
Little words are the sweetest to hear; little charities fly furthest and stay longest on the wing; little lakes are the stillest; little hearts are the fullest, and little farms are the best tilled. Little books are read the most and little songs the dearest loved. And when Nature would make anything especially rare and beautiful, she makes it little; little pearls, little diamonds, little dews. Agar's is a model prayer but the it is a little one; and the burden of the petition is for but the little. Life is made up of little things that count, and death is what remains of them all. Day is made up of little beans, and night is glorious with little stars.
Living on the earth may be expensive, but it includes a free trip around the sun.
Most of us miss out on life's big prizes. The Pulitzer. the Nobel. Oscars. Tonys. Emmys. But we're all eligible for life's small pleasures. A pat on the back. A kiss behind the ear. A full moon. An empty parking space. A crackling fire. A great meal. A glorious sunset.
Don't fret about copping life's grand awards. Enjoy its tiny delights. There are plenty for all of us.
Much happiness is overlooked because it doesn't cost anything.
Music washes away from the soul
the dust of everyday life.
"My experience," said the old gentleman to me, "has been that I never could succeed in getting the special kind of happiness I had wanted or hoped for, but that other kinds of happiness I did not want or had never hoped for were supplied to me, in the course of life, most lavishly and abundantly. I therefore ended by discovering, though it took me a long time to make the discovery, that the right way to enjoy the happiness within my reach was not to form an ideal of my own and be disappointed when it was not realized - for that it never was - but to accept the opportunities for enjoying life which were offered by life itself from year to year and from day to day. Since I took things in this temper, I have enjoyed really a great amount of happiness, though it has been of a kind entirely different from anything I ever anticipated or laid plans for when I was young.
No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
Not he who has little,
But he who desires much
is poor.
Not what I have but what I do is my kingdom.
Not what we have
but what we enjoy
constitutes our abundance.
Our idea of a contented man is the one who enjoys the scenery along the detour.
Pride is an established conviction of one's own paramount worth in some particular respect; while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.
Seize the moment of excited curiosity of any subject, to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.
Some satirists have complained of life, inasmuch as all the pleasures belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle till we are left with old age.
To me, it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season - delightful if it happens to be a favored one, but in practice very rarely favored and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
Success is getting what you want;
Happiness is wanting what you get.
The best things in life are not things.
The less there is between you and the environment, the more you appreciate the environment.
The wayside pool reflects the fleeting clouds as exactly as does the mighty ocean.
There are two things to aim at in life; first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to get somewhere. Most people have plans for progress in their work or homes or family. It is a tragic mistake, however, to hurry so much to "get somewhere" that we miss all our opportunities for happiness today. Do you have time for your pets? They may no longer be around when you think you have time.
Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures.
Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.
To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have.
When a man becomes so busy that he forgets the beautiful things in life, then it can be truly said he is poor.