“Very few people are able to discount the effect of circumstances upon their own characters.”

“To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.”

“Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.”

“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.”

“There are a great many ways in which, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering.”

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

“Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.”