“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”

“Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.”

“Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.”

“Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.”

“The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large. They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought, and without considering that by sufficient effort the whole conditions of their lives could be changed. A certain percentage, guided by personal ambition, make the effort of thought and will which is necessary to place themselves among the more fortunate members of the community; but very few among these are seriously concerned to secure for all the advantages which they seek for themselves. It is only a few rare and exceptional men who have that kind of love toward mankind at large that makes them unable to endure patiently the general mass of evil and suffering, regardless of any relation it may have to their own lives.”

“If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.”