Most of us are experts at solving other people's problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.

If you would be happy all your life, plant a garden.

children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.

the urgent crowds out the essential.

We love those we are happy with. We do. For how else can we know we love them, or how else define loving?

Summer weather, like being in love,is a philosopher's stone which turns our ordinary days to gold. But not the whole day ... For it is never the whole day, never all our life which is transformed in any happiness, but only the exquisite moments.

happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry.