Focus Not on Having Less or Having More, But on Wanting What You Have.

I can build a happy life only on the foundation of my own nature.

There's also something about your bed; it's sort of a symbol of yourself and of your marriage, if you're married. Making your bed doesn't seem to be an important thing in a happy life, and yet it can be that tiny foothold into a more orderly life that sometimes people need.

Now that I've relinquished my fantasies of all the people I wish I could be, and stopped feeling guilty about not going to the opera or pretending that I want to attend a foreign policy lecture, I have more time for the things that I truly enjoy.

We need to have intimate, enduring bonds; we need to be able to confide; we need to feel that we belong; we need to be able to get support, and just as important for happiness, to give support. We need many kinds of relationships; for one thing, we need friends.

Some kind of clutter is difficult - letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers - but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I'm always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter.

[Benjamin Franklin]identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate--temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility--and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.