What is sacred about all of our lives, even those of us who would never dream of using such a word for it, is that God speaks to us through what happens to us—even through such unpromising events as walking up the road to get the mail out of the mailbox, maybe, or seeing something in the news that brings you up short, or laughing yourself silly with a friend. If skeptics ask to be shown an instance of God speaking to them in their lives, I suggest that they pay closer attention to the next time when, for unaccountable reasons, they find tears in their eyes.
—Frederick Buechner
Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
It was another of those big life-changing moments when you didn’t know what the next ten seconds would bring but you knew that nothing would ever be the same after.
—Sarra Manning in Unsticky
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
—Margaret Bonnano
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
—Seneca
If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.
—Princess Diana
For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don’t enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are that you’re not going to be very happy. If someone bases his happiness or unhappiness on major events like a great new job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn’t going to be happy much of the time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness.
—Andy Rooney
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
—Brendan Gill
"Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.
—Cesare Pavese
Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
—Frank Lloyd Wright
To live is like to love—all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
—Samuel Butler
It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
—Eric Hoffer
There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.
—Winston Churchill
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
—P.J. O'Rourke
What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that’s what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by.
—Peter Cameron in Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You