Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?

Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamers who never really lived life at all.

He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its derivatives from the English Language - happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean anyway? Why not just the word pleasure, which was far more... well, pleasant.

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.

Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not - most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.

Why do I want to run from happiness?