The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment.

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever it must go out and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.

He who never sacrificed a present to a future good or a personal to a general one can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.

To think the world therefore a general Bedlam or place of madmen and oneself a physician is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination and the way to happiness.

The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity and with respect only to the present world is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world.

Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran no matter how benign their intentions present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women living in Muslim majority countries as if the desire for choice and happiness is the monopoly of women in the west.

Happiness in the present is only shattered by comparison with the past.

Tell him on the contrary that he needs in the interest of his own happiness to walk in the path of humility and self-control and he will be indifferent or even actively resentful.

I speak directly to the people and I know that the people of California want to have better leadership. They want to have great leadership. They want to have somebody that will represent them. And it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican young or old.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.