Happiness Project Toolbox

"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."

"The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously."

“Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.”

A well-adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

"It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end."

“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.”

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

“Time is strange. A moment can be as short as a breath, or as long as eternity.”

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

“It isn’t the great big pleasures that count the most; it’s making a great deal out of the little ones.”

“You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.”

“Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.”

‎"I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over again."

“When we arrive at the question, the answer is already near.”

"The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!"

“Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight? Always try to be a little kinder than necessary.”

“Paths clear for those who know where they’re going and are determined to get there.”

"True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare."

"Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom."

“Failure seldom stops you; what stops you is the fear of failure.”

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

One can not think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

The man who does more than he is paid will soon be paid for more than he does.

"...the true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life..."

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

"We are so accustomed to disguising our true nature from others, that we end up disguising it from ourselves."

The pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing”

“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”

"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind."

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it”

“The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it.”

"Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force."

"The clearest indication of character is what people find laughable."

We forget too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

"But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age."

"I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me."

"Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be a called failure."

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

“In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere”

“Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking.”

“Whatever is good to know is difficult to learn.”

"Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation."

“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”

“As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.”

“It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all of the answers.”

“The secret to success is to do the common things uncommonly well.”

“Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”

The key to success isn't much good until one discovers the right lock to insert it in.

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.

For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, 'It might ahve been.'

“Control your destiny or somebody else will”

Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.

...great moments often catch us unaware—beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

The great thing about taking big chances when you're younger is you have less to lose.

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.

"Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies."

"Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful."

“Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”

“If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens.”

“Never think you’ve seen the last of anything.”

What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.

"The clearest indication of character is what people find laughable."

“Not all those who wander are lost.”

“At first glance it may appear too hard. Look again. Always look again.”

“Cheerfulness is what greases the axles of the world. Don’t go through life creaking”

“The magic is inside you. There ain’t no crystal ball.”

"A man is what he thinks about all day long."

“Ideas move fast when their time comes.”

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

...mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

"One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy."

"The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up."

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself”

"We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack."

“If you reach for something and find out it’s the wrong thing, you change your program and move on.”

"Kindness, at least actual, is in our power, but fondness is not."

“Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.”

The people who fear humor, and they are many, are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights, to question received opinions, and to suggest unforeseen possibilities.

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.

A year from now you will wish you had started today.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

“Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible.”

A good storyteller is a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven't.

Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you. You just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

Everyone has his day, and some days last longer than others.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

“It takes time to be a success, but time is all it takes.”

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

"Our life is what our thoughts make of it."

"I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don't."

“The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.”

“There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.”

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

There are only seven days in a week—and someday isn’t one of them.

Doors don't slam open.

You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”

An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.”

“It takes a long time to grow an old friend.”

"The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it; the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now."

Regardless of who you are or what you have seen you can be what you want to be.

"Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in."

"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'

“Life is short, and it’s up to you to make it sweet.”

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

“The length of our life is less important than its depth.”

The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

“Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you. ”

“Don’t waste your time hating failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.”

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

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.

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

The secret of being boring is to say everything.

The secret of being boring is to say everything.

“Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.”

“No one has ever become poor by giving.”

"Politeness does not always produce kindness of heart, justice, complacency, or gratitude, but it gives to a man at least the appearance of it, and makes him seem externally what he really should be."

“If you judge people you have no time to love them.”

“If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.”

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the year.”

"It is not impossibilities which fill us with the deepest despair, but possibilities which we have failed to realize."

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

“In the end, what affect your life most deeply are things too simple to talk about.”

In all crises of human affairs there are two broad courses open to a man. He can stay where he is or he can go elsewhere.

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness.

The respect of those you respect is worth more than the applause of the multitude.

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways -- by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.”

“My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”

"One of the best and fastest ways of aquiring knowledge is to insist on remaining ignorant about things that aren't worth knowing."

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich."

“A daydreamer is prepared for most things.”

"To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy."

"To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real."

"It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is."

“Each moment in time we have it all, even when we think we don’t.”

"You can never predict what little things in the way somebody looks or talks or acts will set off peculiar emotional reactions in other people."

"In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high."

“I have a perverse attraction to not knowing what’s going to happen next.”

"Consider, Sir, how insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth hence."

"Associate with people who are likely to improve you."

"To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how, ah, that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity -- toward ultimate freedom of expression."

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often”

“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear”

“It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not”

“…nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should”

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.”

"Nature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost."

"Nature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost."

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

"I will speak ill of no man and speak all the good I know of everybody."

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”

"The man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."

"I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

“It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”

"Anything you don't accomplish yourself seems overwhelmingly big and important."

"When any fit of gloominess...lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert your whole care to hide it. By endeavoring to hide it you will drive it away."

“Patience, n. A minor form of despair disguised as virtue.”

"The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously."

“A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.”

“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken”

“The maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.”

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

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

"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each."

“People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.”

“How beautiful, how buoyant, and glad is morning!”

“The only thing you can control is your own effort.”

“Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough”

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’”

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive”

“Well done is better than well said.”

“The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you."

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what is made by the friends we choose.”

“Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment.”

The best way out is always through.

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”

“True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.”

“Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again.”

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

“Laughter is inner jogging.”

The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

A hero is no braver than a regular man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

“Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.”

“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 that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.”

“Life is all about timing...the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable become available, the unattainable...attainable. Have the patience, wait it out."

“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

“Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.”

“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

“I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.”

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one."

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”