At the root of all misery is unfulfilled desire.

'Well,' said Red Jacket [to someone complaining that he had not enough time], 'I suppose you have all there is.'

If I didn't get fond I could be happy all the time.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the room was large, for a ship's stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.

He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop.

Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans.

and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had found it.

I preferred a safe horse to a fast one - I would like to have an excessively gentle horse - a horse with no spirit whatever- a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five minutes I was mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no time to label him 'This is a horse,' and so if the public took him for a sheep I cannot help it.

There lies the image of our past and of our future, cried Alleyne, as they rode on upon their way. Now, which is better, to till God's earth, to have happy faces round one's knee, and to love and be loved, or to sit forever moaning over one's own soul, like a mother over a sick babe?

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.

The happiness we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings[1]