Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Most people are searching for happiness. They're looking for it. They're trying to find it in someone or something outside of themselves. That's a fundamental mistake. Happiness is something that you are, and it comes from the way you think.

As you get older you try to do things that please you more. You get a little more selfish. You start thinking I want to do things where I enjoy myself.

Self fulfillment thinks of how something serves me. Self development thinks of how something helps me to serve others. With self fulfillment, feeling good is the product. With self development, feeling good is the by-product.

Being happy is a very personal thing-and it really has nothing to do with anyone else.

Understand that there is no relationship between your inner happiness and your inner joy and the outer things that you experience and behold in the world, that it all begins with you, the world is a mirror to your own Self, when you can look at things and feel joy not in the things but in yourself.

If we are unhappy without a relationship, we'll probably be unhappy with one as well. A relationship doesn't begin our life; a relationship doesn't become our life. A relationship is a continuation of life.

I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.

I’ll tell you what it’s time to do right now. It’s time to set your schedule in order so that you don’t look back on the day of your death and wonder why you never really lived. It’s time to ignore the opinions of those who think your life should be all about their cause, their rules, their agenda, and not your soul’s desire. It’s time to stop flagellating and start dancing.

Be independent and don't try to think someone is going to save you or look to someone else to make you happy or look to someone else to complete you.

We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.

But happiness ... happiness grows at our own firesides," she said. "It is not to be picked in strangers' gardens." ~ The House at Riverton

I think your heart dances to the beat of your own drum, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

Our danger is to think that happiness will come from outside of us, from the things we possess or the power of our group, and not from within us, from the inner sanctuary of our being.

Let your life be pleasing to the multitude, and it can not be so to yourself.

Work for your own soul's sake.

If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life.

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.

It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.

We have been accustomed to thinking that we have to get something from outside us in order to be happy, but in truth it works the other way: we must learn to contact our inner source of happiness and satisfaction and flow it outward to share with others-not because it is virtuous to do so, but because it really feels good.

I think no matter what you do you can't please everybody. You have to ask yourself, "Did I do what I set out to do?"

Teach your children that they need nothing exterior to themselves to be happy, no person, place or thing, and that true happiness is found within.

Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.