Aging happy and well, instead of sad and sick, is at least under some personal control. We have considerable control over our weight, our exercise, our education, and our abuse of cigarettes and alcohol. With hard work and/or therapy, our relationships with our spouses and our coping styles can be changed for the better. A successful old age may lie not so much in our stars and genes as in ourselves.

We can laugh from either joy or happiness, but we weep only from grief or joy...Without the pain of farewell, there is no joy in reunion...without the pain of captivity, we don't experience the joy of freedom.

Joy is connection... The more areas in your life you can make connection, the better.

The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points to a straightforward five-word conclusion: Happiness is love. Full stop.

The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.

It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.

If you want to treat an illness that has no easy cure, first of all, treat them with hope.