Purring would seem to be in her case an automatic safety valve device for dealing with happiness overflow.

Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose freedom and happiness.

If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness fewer marriages would end in tears.

If you asked somebody 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement knowledge ' God knows - I mean many many different things but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.

If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman it would be I think an American cow.

I've often thought if I didn't make my marriage work I would have failed at my one true shot at happiness.

I think money is essential to happiness and right now I wouldn't want to be anyone other than Wilbur Smith - I've had a fantastic life rewarded far more heavily than I deserve. Maybe I'd like to be J. K. Rowling but I'll settle for second best.

Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually just as we monitor money and GDP.

The mindset of chasing that next #1 record doesn't exist for me anymore. It's more about being a well-rounded entertainer than being a pop artist. Obviously it would be wonderful to have a hit record but I don't base my happiness on that anymore. It's about the accomplishment of a project that satisfies me. I just want to enjoy the ride.

It is also rarer to find happiness in a man surrounded by the miracles of technology than among people living in the desert of the jungle and who by the standards set by our society would be considered destitute and out of touch.