Live Long And Happy Quotes & Sayings

i believe in the freedom of state where every people have to right develop their culture and maintain the democracy while two things are very essential justice and equality - Long Live Pakistan and Happy Independence Day — Avinash Advani

All I wanted to do was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already. Now, looking out the tunnel of trees over the ravine at the sky with white clouds moving across in the wind, I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman that you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long sudden-ended always; making time stand still, sometimes so very still that afterwards you wait to hear it move, and it is slow in starting. But you are not alone because if you have every really loved her happy and untragic, she loves you always; no matter whom she loves nor where she goes she loves you more. — Ernest Hemingway,

I've learned to live simply, wisely
I've learned to live simply, wisely,
To look at the sky and pray to God,
And to take long walks before evening
To wear out this useless anxiety.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
And the yellow-red clusters of rowan nod,
I compose happy verses
About mortal life, mortal and beautiful life.
I return. The fluffy cat
Licks my palm and sweetly purrs.
And on the turret of the sawmill by the lake
A bright flame flares.
The quiet is cut, occasionally,
By the cry of a stork landing on the roof.
And if you were to knock at my door,
It seems to me I wouldn't even hear.
(English version by Judith Hemschemeyer
Original Language Russian) — Anna Akhmatova

I'm very happy that you're following your dreams. I've discovered that they fragile things and must be fed if they are to live long enough to turn into reality. There are only two things that will feed a dream: action and honesty. If you are honest enough to face your dream, with all its limitations, and willing to take whatever action is necessary to make up for those limitations, then there is a good chance you will be one of the few to succeed. — Karen Hawkins

My parents' long and happy marriage was a great ideal to live up to, but a tough one. — Olivia Williams

On, I don't think I'm a genius!' cried Josie, growing calm and sober as she listened to the melodious voice and looked into the expressive face that filled her with confidence, so strong, sincere and kindly was it. 'I only want to find out if I have talent enough to go on, and after years of study be able to act well in any of the good plays people never tire of seeing. I don't expected to be a Mrs. Siddons or a Miss Cameron, much as I long to be; but it does seem as if I had something in me which can't come out in any way but this. When I act I'm perfectly happy. I seem to live, to be in my own world, and each new part is a new friend. I love Shakespeare, and am never tired of his splendid people. Of course I don't understand it all; but it's like being alone at night with the mountains and the stars, solemn and grand, and I try to imagine how it will look when the sun comes up, and all is glorious and clear to me. I can't see, but I feel the beauty, and long to express it. — Louisa May Alcott

Riches, prestige, everything can be lost. But the happiness in your heart can only be dimmed; it will always be there as long as you live, to make you happy again.
Whenever you're feeling lonely or sad, try going to the loft on a beautiful day and looking outside. Not at the houses and the rooftops, but at the sky. As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that your pure within and will find happiness once more. — Anne Frank

When we look in to the long avenue of the future, and see the good there is for each one of us to do, we realize, after all, what a beautiful thing it is to work, and to live, and to be happy. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck. — Graham Greene

I stop at the tune store, where I'm greeted by Javier and Jules. Half the store is Javier's, half is Jules's - they have entirely different musical tastes, so you have to know going in whether the tune you're looking for is more like Javier or Jules. They have been together for more than twenty years, and today as they offer me cider and argue the blues, I want to ask them how they've done it. To be together with someone for twenty years seems like an eternity to me. I can't seem to manage twenty days. Twenty weeks would be a stretch. How can they stand there behind the counter, spinning songs for each other day in and day out? How can they find things to say - how can they avoid saying things they'll always regret? How do you stay together? I want to ask them, the same way I want to ask my happy parents, the same way I want to go up to old people and ask them 'what is it like to live so long'? — David Levithan

Dear Jack,
I love you, too.
And I think I know the secret to a long and happy marriage - just choose someone you can't live without.
For me, that would be you.
So if you insist on being traditional ...
Yes.
- Ella — Lisa Kleypas

I think I know the secret to a long and happy marriage - just choose someone you can't live without. — Lisa Kleypas

Twas a jolly old pedagogue, long ago, Tall and slender, and sallow and dry; His form was bent, and his gait was slow, His long thin hair was white as snow, But a wonderful twinkle shone in his eye. And he sang every night as he went to bed, "Let us be happy down here below: The living should live, though the dead be dead." Said the jolly old pedagogue long ago. — George Arnold

In real life, good people die all the time and a**holes can live long and happy lives. It's a crapshoot. — Bentley Little

For the farsighted, the folks in the know, life is a deer park, where gentle breezes and fragrant grape leaves keep you company, complete with afternoon foot-soakings, peaceful snoozes, fine hounds and desirable wenches, the hell with all care; a long life, a nice pipe from time to time, mellow dinners: that's the way to spend life, life that digs your grave even now, steadfastly, like the ever-burrowing mole. To want nothing, and ask only for peace and quiet. Hope for nothing besides fair weather on the morrow. Trust no one, believe no one, think no extraordinary thoughts, just live, live, and love; fall asleep, and wake up healthy ... Wear comfy slippers and pass the night in a feather bed. Live out a happy and long old age, the best part of life. To get an honest night's sleep, and then a snooze after lunch, let out a few whoops, fight and make up. — Gyula Krudy

I'm just happy that I'm able to take care of what I need to take care of, live, and do the thing that I love the most and that is to sing. People want to hear it, buy it, see it, hold it, record it, bootleg it. It's fine with me as long as it's good but when it's bad I'm in trouble! — Ledisi

There is a very definite Russian heart in me; that never dies. I think you're born and you live your life with it and you die with it. I'm very much an American - my books tend to be about American things, but inside there's that sort of tortured, long-suffering, aching, constantly analysing Russian soul underneath the happy American exterior. — Paullina Simons

Ingratitude is a bad habit by which we needlessly punish ourselves. When we no longer have the things we enjoy, we miss them and long for the past, long for what is not there, long to escape. Being always mindfully unhappy and mindlessly happy is not a prudent way to live. The Epicurean must train himself to be mindfully happy. — Hiram Crespo

The only thing I'll never have is what I have lost for ever and ever ... As long as I live, until I draw my last breath, I shall remember Asel and all those beautiful things that were ours. The day I was to leave I went to the lake and stood on the rise above it. I was saying good-bye to the Tien Shan mountains, to Issyk-Kul. Good-bye, Issyk-Kul, my unfinished song! How I wish I could take you with me, your blue waters and your yellow shores, but I can't, just as I can't take the woman I love with me. Goodbye, Asel. Good-bye, my pretty poplar in a red kerchief! Good-bye, my love, I want you to be happy ... — Chingiz Aitmatov

As long as there is a lack of the inner discipline that brings calmness of mind, no matter what external facilities or conditions you have, they will never give you the feeling of joy and happiness that you are seeking. On the other hand, if you possess this inner quality, a calmness of mind, a degree of stability within, then even if you lack various external facilities that you would normally consider necessary for happiness, it is still possible to live a happy and joyful life. — Dalai Lama XIV

What can I say to you that I haven't already said? What can I give you that I haven't already given? Is there anything of me that isn't yours already? My body, my mind, my heart, even my soul. Everything that is me belonged to you long before this, and it shall be yours long after this. I will follow you anywhere and everywhere you lead. I will keep you and anyone created with our love safe from all harm. From this day on, I choose you, my beloved, to be my wife. To live with you and laugh with you; to stand by your side, and sleep in your arms; to bring out the best in you always, and, for you, to be the most that I can. I promise to laugh with you in good times, to struggle with you in bad; to wipe your tears with my hands; to comfort you with my words; to mirror you with my soul; and savor every moment, happy or sad, until the end of our lives and beyond. — Jamie McGuire

Em, we've known each other five or six years now, but two years properly, as, you know, 'friends', which isn't that long but I think I know a bit about you and I think I know what your problem is. Here it is. I think you're scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim and grey and dour and to hate your job, hate where you live, not to have success or money or God forbid a boyfriend. In fact, I think I'll go further and say that I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it. — David Nicholls

I have come a long way and learnt a lot. I read this quote about a year ago: 'Happiness must not be pursued; it must ensue.' It's made me realise that just being married again or something like that won't make me happy; the happiness ensues from how we live our lives. — Lucy Davis

I'm going to make you happy, Natalie. I'm going to give you all the things you want, and I'll never betray you. As long as we're together, you and Aarabelle will be what I live for. I know she's not mine, but I'll love her like she is. I'm going to make sure you never know what it feels like to be second best. — Corinne Michaels

Only danger is real, and difficulty. Yet we live to make our lives safe - and those of others. (..) I will fight my own people to keep them from fighting, for as long as can be. Never fight, until it is unsafe not to fight, unsafe for our souls as well as our bodies. Then fight for their safety, - but when it is won, remember that safety itself is unsafe. For what is safety? It is sleepy thing. It does not make one happy. It does not remind one that it is good to be alive. Life is taken for granted, so it is no longer surprise. It grows dull and monotonous, one lives as a tree or a cabbage or a cow in the straw of the byre. Our forefathers scorned "a straw death". A straw life is worse. — Margaret Irwin

Without me, she can live a long, full life. She can be happy. I must leave her, in fact, for her own good.'
I didn't much like the way Francis put that. Parents are always trying to make you do things for your own good. Not boyfriends. With boyfriends, the relationship is supposed to be equal. They're supposed to let you make your own decisions.
But I couldn't tell Cathy about Francis's undead love-weasel ways. Anyway, this was more proof that Francis really was too old for. It truly was for her own good. Agreeing with Francis gave me a stomachache, so I sat there and made a face. — Justine Larbalestier

Please say you'll be my wife. I want you tied to me in every way a man can be tied to the woman he loves. I can't live without you and I never want to try. Share the boat with me. Share your life with me. If you will, I promise to keep you safe and happy every day for as long as I draw breath. — M. Leighton

Might not live long but I know I'ma die happy. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

THERE IS NO mystery to happiness. Unhappy men are alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn
or worse, indifference
cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present. — Jed Rubenfeld

May your life be rich in blessings and poor in misfortunes. May you see your children's children grow up and make you proud. May your fights be short, your laughter loud, and your passion hot. May you live long and die happy. — Ilona Andrews

You don't know how long you have, do what makes you happy. Live. Love and be remarkable. — Will Kostakis

No offense, doll, but that's not something I'm willing to share. I'd prefer to live a long and happy life if it's all the same to you."
"You can't just throw out vague allegations and then say nothing else!"
"See, that's the good thing about being a fugitive like me. I can do what the hell I like, and I'm not answerable to anyone." Stepping away from the bars, he stands with his legs stretched out wide. His stance matches his grin.
"Sure looks like that's working out well for you," I say, piercing him with a scornful look. — Siobhan Davis

I'd be happy to live till 80 as long as I was comfortable and in good health. Mind you, ask me again on the eve of my 80th birthday. Even so, I hope we don't all start living to be 120. I'm not sure I'd cope with another 60 years. — Bonnie Tyler

Everybody should be lucky enough to live as long as I have and be happy. — Delbert McClinton

Forget living a long life cause I don't see that happening with me living a life of misery, neglect, and pain. So I just want to die happy. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

It didn't and doesn't turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It's only a matter of how long you can live with it. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I want to be safe in the knowledge that I can tour and play festivals for a long time. The main thing is that I want a good reputation as a live performer. If I have that, I'd be so happy. — Ellie Goulding

I know you were just trying to help. But I passed the point of help a long time ago. Look, I know about your people and customs, and I know you were raised inside a cage. The last thing you need is to be saddled with a man who can barely walk. Why don't you just go and get your own place and live? I'll be happy to put you on all my accounts. You'll never want for anything. (Adron)
I can't do that. (Livia)
Why not? (Adron)
Because I love you. (Livia) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

as long as people feel that kind of happiness within themselves, the joy of nature, health and much more besides, they'll always be able to recapture that happiness. Riches, prestige, everything can be lost. But the happiness in your own heart can only be dimmed; it will always be there, as long as you live, to make you happy again. Whenever you're feeling lonely or sad, try going to the loft on a beautiful day and looking outside. Not at the houses and the rooftops, but at the sky. As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more. SUNDAY, — Anne Frank

It's never too late to change your mind and be who you were meant to be. Our minds can be really powerful things, and they can come up with a million reasons as to why you can't make a change. Our minds can say that it's not logical, or it's been like this for too long, or it's too hard, or what are people going to think. But sometimes it's more important to live from your gut and from your heart than from your head... It's okay to decide that being happy is worth more than getting the law degree, or marrying your high-school sweetheart because they were nice enough, or being an actor because you think you're incapable of doing anything else. It's never too late to take charge of your destiny and make a different contribution to the world. — Lisa Jakub

Let my heiress have full rights,
Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.
Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,
How the tortured breast craves air.
The love of my friends, my enemies' rancor
And the yellow roses in my bushy garden,
And a lover's burning tenderness-all this
I bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.
Also the glory for which I was born,
For which my star, like some whirlwind, soared
And now falls. Look, its falling
Prophesies your power, love and inspiration.
Preserving my generous bequest,
You will live long and worthily.
Thus it will be. You see, I am content,
Be happy, but remember me. — Anna Akhmatova

WITHOUT YOU
I miss you more than ever and do not know what to do.
I remember waking up at dawn,
but can't expect to live another day without you.
The mirror does not lie.
I feel so different.
I miss you you.
People spend and spend as long as the pace of life seems wrong.
I was so different when you were here.
It was so different when you were here.
There is nothing more difficult than living without you.
I'm suffering in the hope to once again see.
You get the cold out of my body and it asks for you.
But I do not know where you are ...
If you had been here, I would be so happy.
But there is nothing more difficult than living without you ... — Jose N. Harris

I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It's not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity.
Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy.
The miracle of not having to talk about oneself. — Albert Camus

Marry me he said voice full of emotion. Be my soul mate my friend and my lover as long as we both live. Make babies with me that have curly hair and big brown eyes. Grow old with me and we'll watch the sun set together in the evenings. And when I leave this world I'll be happy knowing I was the best man I could be for having loved you. — Jo Davis

Something snapped inside her. "Of course I'm afraid! Relationships do bad things to me." He started to respond, but the pain had gone on long enough, and she didn't want to hear it. "You know what I want? I want peace. I want a good job and a decent place to live. I want to read books and listen to music and have time to make some female friendships that are going to last. When I wake up in the morning, I want to know that I have a decent shot at being happy. And here's what's really sad. Until I met you, I was almost there. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It's not too late," he says. "Zahra, I - "
"Sh." I lay a finger across his lips. "Don't say it. You will marry Caspida, and you will learn to love each other. You will live a happy life, long after my lamp has passed to new hands."
"I won't make my third wish," he says. "That's the answer! If I don't make the wish, you can stay here in the palace for as long as you want. You'll never have to go back to your lamp. We can fight off anyone who tries to take you from me. — Jessica Khoury

I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman that you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long, sudden-ended always; making time stand still, sometimes so very still that afterwards you wait to hear it move,and it is slow in starting. — Ernest Hemingway,

But I promise you, you guys can do it. In four days you'll be the happiest person Earth has ever seen. You'll stand by the ocean and feel the salty sea spray tingling in your nose. You'll be with people you know and love, and you'all appreciate how beautiful everything is. You'll se cars behind you in your rear view mirror, and maybe you'll laugh at the driver's faces. Because they'll look annoyed, bored, angry. And you'll realize what they're missing. You'll live a long and happy life, Mia. Because when you get home, you'll realize that anything is possible. You mustn't ever forget that. — Johan Harstad

If you are miserable and ill, I can understand why you would not want to live a long time. But if you are happy and productive, why not? Why should people have to grow old and die? — Damon Knight

I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy. — James Longstreet

Child. This ability to grieve - that is, to give up the illusion of his "happy" childhood, to feel and recognize the full extent of the hurt he has endured - can restore the depressive's vitality and creativity and free the grandiose person from the exertions of and dependence on his Sisyphean task. If a person is able, during this long process, to experience the reality that he was never loved as a child for what he was but was instead needed and exploited for his achievements, success, and good qualities - and that he sacrificed his childhood for this form of love - he will be very deeply shaken, but one day he will feel the desire to end these efforts. He will discover in himself a need to live according to his true self and no longer be forced to earn "love" that always leaves him empty-handed, since it is given to his false self - something he has begun to identify and relinquish. — Alice Miller

Ghosts are laid to rest when injustices are righted, when their duties are fulfilled. But my mother's duty is to make me happy so long as I live. So there is not rest for her, and no escape for me. I will be happy and happy until it kills me. — Rosamund Hodge

Most men seem to live for themselves, without much or any regard for thy glory, or for the good of others;
They earnestly desire and eagerly pursue the riches, honor, and pleasures of this life, as if they supposed that wealth, greatness, merriment, could make their immortal souls happy;
But, alas, what false delusive dreams are these!
And how miserable ere long will those be that sleep in them, for all out happiness consists in loving thee and being holy as thou art holy. — Arthur Bennett

I spent a long time playing that game," she said. "Pretending there were other versions of this world, where other versions of me got to live, and be happy, even if I didn't, and you know what? It's lonely as hell. Maybe there are other versions, other lives, but this one's ours. It's all we've got. — Victoria Schwab

Among us, I am happy to say, old age is honorable, and regarded as a blessing from the Lord. It is our duty to desire to live long upon the earth, that we may do as much good as we possibly can. I esteem it a great privilege to have the opportunity of living in mortality. The Lord has sent us here "for a wise and glorious purpose," and it should be our business to find out what that purpose is and then to order our lives accordingly. — Lorenzo Snow

Yesterday, I was sad, tomorrow i may be sad again, but today i know that i am happy. I want to live on and on, delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and i know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart. — Ruskin Bond

A real man is happy and eager to live by your rules, as long as he knows what the rules are and he's sure that abiding by those rules will help keep the woman he loves happy — Steve Harvey

telling him how people had thought the same thing long before he and his brother were born, that it was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them. His father said it was hope that made people feel this, not dread. People talked of the end coming with barely concealed smiles. Their prayer was that when they went, they wouldn't go alone. Their hope was that no one would have the good fortune to come after and live a happy life without them. Thoughts — Hugh Howey

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. — Rebecca Solnit

You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life. You are here to live, to be happy, and to love. If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won't enjoy your life. Do your best, and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy. — Miguel Ruiz

For strangely graven
Is the orb of life, that one and another
In gold and power may outpass his brother.
And men in their millions float and flow
And seethe with a million hopes as leaven;
And they win their Will, or they miss their Will,
And the hopes are dead or are pined for still;
But whoe'er can know,
As the long days go,
That To Live is happy, hath found his Heaven! — Euripides

From dear, dear Gloria Swanson, I learned how to live long, happy and free of health problems. I owe her my life. — Dirk Benedict

Come on," he said to Valentine one day. "Let's fly away and live forever."
"We can't," she said. "There are miracles even relativity can't pull off, Ender."
"We have to go. I'm almost happy here."
"So, stay."
"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."
So they boarded a starship and went from world to world. Wherever they stopped, he was always Andrew Wiggin, itinerant speaker for the dead, and she was always Valentine, historian errant, writing down the stories of the living while Ender spoke the stories of the dead. And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for the world where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time. — Orson Scott Card

I felt for a long time that this is what I want to do so I'm happy at this point to just take my time and work on projects that I feel strongly about, and the rest of the time just live my life. — Jennifer Connelly

I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes." "Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester - both virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, — Charlotte Bronte

Music is the only thing that you can share with a million million people and you don't lose, you gain. It helps you to get energy and to live long, because when your soul is very happy then you don't want to die. — Ali Akbar Khan

I didn't particularly want to live much longer than that. Life seemed rather daunting. It seems so to me even now. Life seemed too long a time to have to stick around, a huge span of years through which one would be require to tap-dance and smile and be Great! and be Happy! and be Amazing! and be Precious! I was tired of my life by the time I was sixteen. I was tired of being too much, too intense, too manic. I was tired of people, and I was incredibly tired of myself. I wanted to do whatever Amazing Thing I was expected to do - it might be pointed out that these were my expectations, mine alone - and be done with it. Go to sleep. — Marya Hornbacher

All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity - happy marriages, healthy bodies - are ours to have. We live long,
good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by our families, before dementia sets in. Cancer, heart disease, and most debilitating
illnesses are almost entirely eradicated. This is as close to perfect as any society has ever managed to get. — Ally Condie

And may you happy live, And long us bless. — Christina Rossetti

Life's like a book: What matters is the hook.
Be it short or long, just live it strong.
Whether it's five stars, or how near or far, just soar! — Ana Claudia Antunes

I imagine we're safe, happy, and truly in love. And I imagine that I can tell her without shame and stigma attached to my words. I imagine it because I don't know if I'll survive long enough to be able to live it. — Lynnette Brisia

Encounters are after all merely future farewells and he could live with that as long as they both got happy endings. Even if it meant they didn't get it together. — BeccaAmon

Fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while — Don Marquis

Page: Don't keep the world on tenterhooks, Tom! Out with it! What's the best thing we can do to ensure a long, happy, healthy future for mankind?
Grey: We can just about restore the balance of the ecology, the biosphere, and so on-in other words we can live within our means instead of on an unrepayable overdraft, as we've been doing for the past half century-if we exterminate the two hundred million most extravagant and wasteful of our species.
Page: Follow that if you can, Mr. President. — John Brunner

I can't stand whining. I can't stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they're not happy with the choices they've made. You live in a time when there are endless choices ... Money certainly helps, and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don't even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself ... Do something! — Hillary Clinton

To remember sometimes is a great sorrow, but when the remembering has been done, there comes afterwards a very curious peacefulness. Because you have planted your flag on the summit of the sorrow. You have climbed it.
And I notice again in the writing of this confession that there is nothing called long-ago after all. When things are summoned up, it is all present time, pure and simple. So that, much to my surprise, people I have loved are allowed to live again. What it is that allows them I don't know. I have been happy now and then in the last two weeks, the special happiness that is offered from the hand of sorrow. — Sebastian Barry

The sensation was part of the general strangeness that made him feel like a man waking from a long sleep to find himself in an unknown country among people of alien tongue. We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with ours. Of the points in his wife's character not in direct contact with his own, Glennard now discerned his ignorance; and the baffling sense of her remoteness was intensified by the discovery that, in one way, she was closer to him than ever before. As one may live for years in happy unconsciousness of the possession of a sensitive nerve, he had lived beside his wife unaware that her individuality had become a part of the texture of his life, ineradicable as some growth on a vital organ; and he now felt himself at once incapable of forecasting her judgment and powerless to evade its effects. — Edith Wharton

[ ... ] we humans, as long as we live, are generally incapable of freeing ourselves from a certain ardent searching and longing, and should not even strive to; that our longing for happiness seems far more beautiful, always far more sensitive, more significant and all in all probably far more desirable than happiness itself, which perhaps need not even exist, since the fervent, gratifying pursuit of happiness and an everlasting, deep desire for it perhaps not only suit perfectly our needs, but satisfy them far better, far more profoundly; that being happy is by no means to be taken casually, unquestioningly as the meaning of the world, the goal and purpose of life, and so on. — Robert Walser

I hope to live long and be happy. But I'd like to be remembered as somebody who did good rather than mischief. — Mary Archer