Man cannot live without joy. That is why one deprived of spiritual joys goes over to carnal pleasures.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Wants are my best riches, for I have these supplied by Christ.

Happy are they who are found wanting.

We love to carry heaven to heaven with us, and would have two summers in one year, and no less than two heavens; but this will not be for us: one, and such an one, may suffice us well enough. The Man Christ got but one only, and shall we have two?

Simplicity is something more, something other than just doing without or doing it yourself. Its essence is neither forsaking nor striving. Its essence, rather, is listening: What has God put in your heart? Simplicity is, once having discerned that, being content with it. Simplifying it further: simplicity is being content with God.

Comparison is the death of joy.

He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.

Happiness seems to depend on leisure, because we work to have leisure, and wage war to live in peace.

There is one end we all have — not in virtue of being rational, but simply in virtue of being human being — and that is happiness.

Again, it is for the sake of the soul that goods external and goods of the body are eligible at all, and all wise men ought to choose them for the sake of the soul, and not the soul for the sake of them.