How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise.
—Homer (Ancient Greek Poet)
The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
—Taisen Deshimaru (Japanese Buddhist Teacher)
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)
Do not waste a minute—not a second—in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Unitarian Minister)
Four be the things I am wiser to know:|Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.|Four be the things I’d been better without:|Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.|Three be the things I shall never attain:|Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.|Three be the things I shall have till I die:|Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
—Dorothy Parker (American Poet)
Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)
No matter how much you feed a wolf, he will always return to the forest.
—Russian Proverb
When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed.
—John Wesley (British Methodist Religious Leader)