Willa Cather

"That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."

--Willa Cather

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Carole Hyatt and Linda Gottlieb

"There are people who learn, who are open to what happens to them, who listen, who hear the lessons. . . . The question to ask is not whether you are a success or failure, but whether you are a learner or a nonlearner."

--Carole Hyatt and Linda Gottlieb

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Mignon McLauglin

"For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance."

--Mignon McLauglin
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Amy E. Dean

"Tonight I’ll think about what I can mean to my life, not what my life can mean to me."

--Amy E. Dean
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"We tend not to choose the unknown, which might be a shock or disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching."

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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Benjamin E. Mays

"It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for."

--Benjamin E. Mays
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Eric Hoffer

"When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves."

--Eric Hoffer
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R.I. Fitzhenry

"Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don’t let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity."

--R.I. Fitzhenry
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Oscar Wilde

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

--Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Levant

"Happiness is not something you experience, it’s something you remember."

--Oscar Levant

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Aldous Huxley

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

--Aldous Huxley

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Alexander Pope

"Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think."

--Alexander Pope

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Sydney J. Harris

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered with time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

--Sydney J. Harris

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Winifred Holtby

"The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation; it is understanding. These are the moments of revelation which compensate for the chaos, the discomfort, the toil of living....These are the moments in which all the disorder of life assumes a pattern. We see; we understand; and immediately the intolerable burden becomes tolerable; we stand for a moment on the slopes of a great mountain from the summit of which we can see the truth, and thus enjoy the greatest felicity of which we are capable."
--Winifred Holtby

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Dag Hammarskjold

"In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us."

--Dag Hammarskjold
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Florida Scott-Maxwell

"I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing age that it is a time of discovery. If they say 'Of what?' I can only answer 'We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it wouldn’t be discovery.'”

--Florida Scott-Maxwell

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Reflections on Life

"When you were born, you cried, and the whole world rejoiced. Live such a life that when you die the world will cry and you will rejoice."

--Anonymous
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Sir Kenelm Digby

"One can have no happiness in this world or the next but by extreme and vehement love."

--Sir Kenelm Digby

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Michel De Montaigne

"To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately."

--Michel De Montaigne

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Reflections on Life

"Youth is a gift of nature; aging is a work of art."

--Anonymous
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Carl Jung

"We must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life, that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts."

--Carl Jung

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Sydney J. Harris

"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'”

--Sydney J. Harris

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Albert Einstein

"The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life."

--Albert Einstein

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Helen Hayes

"It is really about time that age was accepted as part of life too....We are afraid of growing old. And many of us spend more than half our waking hours trying to camouflage our age....There is nothing more beautiful than an unadorned old face with the lines that tell a story, a story of a life that has been lived with some fullness."

--Helen Hayes

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George Harris

"The art of living successfully consists of being able to hold two opposite ideas in tension at the same time; first, to make long-term plans as if we were going to live forever; and, second, to conduct ourselves daily as if we were going to die tomorrow."

--George Harris

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Toni Morrison

"As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think."

--Toni Morrison

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Kyle Samuel Crichton

"Life’s a pretty precious and wonderful thing. You can’t sit down and let it lap around you...you have to plunge into it; you have to dive through it! And you can’t save it, you can’t store it up; you can’t horde it in a vault. You’ve got to taste it; you’ve got to use it. The more you use the more you have...that’s the miracle of it!"

--Kyle Samuel Crichton

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George Jean Nathan

"My code of conduct is simply this: work hard; play to the allowable limit; disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others...live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities...and be satisfied with life always, but never with oneself."

--George Jean Nathan

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is not length of life, but depth of life."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Gian-Carlo Menotti

"Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do. For me the conception of Hell lies in two words: 'too late.'”

--Gian-Carlo Menotti
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Cardinal Newman

"Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning."

--Cardinal Newman

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