To be happy, you must live in, but not for, the present moment.

Whatever you experience outwardly, take it within yourself and say 'I'm happy because I'm happy. I'm happy because God is in my heart.'

The churches had left me cold, but I thought there's got to be a God. I remember going out, this is in Charleston, South Carolina, and my desire then was to be a playwright, and I was studying theater, and I went out one night, late at night, and I asked, "What can God be if there is a God?" I wasn't sure there was a God, but if there is a God, what must he be? Well, he can't be a judge, who's up there just waiting for us to make a mistake so he can clap us into hell. There's got to be something more than that.

Until you've tasted it [anything], you can't really know it.

The "kingdom of heaven" to which he referred was the state of God-consciousness, not the beautiful astral heavens that most people visualize, where virtuous souls go after death.

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

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.