Happiness is never there to stay [...] Happiness is merely a respite offered by inquietude.

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.

Happiness flourishes where there is happiness.

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.