Happiness

“Talking is great, but don't ignore the value of listening. Pay attention to the words being spoken. Some people just love the sound of their own voice. And, when another person speaks, they are only anticipating to compete, challenge, or question what is being said. You can miss out on some important wisdom always running your mouth.”

“To me, God is like this happy bus driver.”

“I'm not sure a pretty and stupid man might be the key to a happy relationship.”

“Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.”

“Of my own career, I have many happy memories, but perhaps it - the 2010/11 season, where United broke the record for number of title wins - was the best. I was very satisfied with my performance that year.”

“I would never butt heads with Rob Zombie. I don't know anybody that's in acting that ever butted heads with Rob Zombie. I adore Rob. I adore him. I adore working with him. I adore knowing him. I'm happy to consider myself a friend and someone who he hires. I just think he's great.”

“Neymar will leave Barca fans speechless. He could become an even better player than he was during the Confederations Cup with Brazil. He'll easily adapt to the style of the team and will be very happy there.”

“A man desire two things: love and happiness.”

“Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.”

“I'm very happy at Bayern.”

“Dear me! how happy and good we'd be, if we had no worries!”

“A good president needs a big comfort zone. He should be able to treat enemies as opportunities, appear authentic in joy and grief, stay cool under the hot lights.”

“Do not forget the joy of existence.”

“Tell your children the most important things To Be when they grow up, is to be kind and compassionate, to be loving and grateful, and to be happy and at peace with who they are, no matter of what they chose to do when they grow up.”

“I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work.”

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”

“Xerxes, I read, ‘halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction’ the beauty of a single sycamore. You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain…you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven’t you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. Your men are bewildered…there is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meager ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse…and that sycamore. You saw it; you will stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe. “He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life.” We all ought to have a goldsmith following us around. But it goes without saying, doesn’t it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back the glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it; he grabbed pen and paper and scrawled the one word, and wore it sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don’t know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore.”

“Single parents - both women and men - can play as critical a role as the traditional two-parent family, and gay and lesbian parents can, and do, raise happy, resilient children. When it comes to family life, form is not merely as important as content. Feeling loved and supported, nurtured and safe, is far more critical than the 'package' it comes in.”

“When you try hard to find happiness for other, you will unknowingly find yourself on the island of happiness.”

“I'm happy that I know how to speak 'Southern.' I spent a lot of time in Alabama throughout my life. I even lived there for part of junior high and high school, so I learned the true beauty and mastery of the Southern dialect. 'Y'all' is one of the greatest and most useful words ever invented.”