It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose aiming at something outside self.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.

Genuine happiness can only be achieved when we transform our way of life from the unthinking pursuit of pleasure to one committed to enriching our inner lives when we focus on 'being more' rather than simply having more.

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness and only what is useless is pleasurable.

A string of excited fugitive miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment when the picture of one's life or of human life as it truly has been or is satisfies the will and is gladly accepted.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.