The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Happiness is not on my list of priorities. I just deal with day-to-day things. If I'm happy, I'm happy - and if I'm not, I don't know the difference... Knowing that you are the person you were put on this earth to be - that's much more important than just being happy.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.