Catherine the Great

In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read.

One does not always do the best there is. One does the best one can. – Catherine the Great

I may be kindly, I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to will terribly what I will at all.

Don’t worry about things you cannot alter.

If I may venture to be frank I would say about myself that I was every inch a gentleman …

Experience shows that the frequent use of severe punishment has never rendered a people better. The death of a criminal is a less effective means of restraining crimes than the permanent example of a man deprived of his liberty during the whole of his life to make amends for the injury he has done to the public.

If you are not happy every morning when you get up, leave for work, or start to work at home, and are not enthusiastic about doing that, you will not be successful.

I think happiness is love.

Anybody who thinks money will make you happy, hasn’t got money.

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

Happiness, wealth, and success are the byproducts of goal setting; they cannot be the goals themselves.

The unhappiest man on earth is the one who has nothing to do.

There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.

I’m always smiling and happy.

Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Relinquishing the delusional hope that we can or must be flawless allows us to seek happiness in the place it can be found: Our real, messy, imperfect experience

A happy life is just a string of happy moments. But most people don’t allow the happy moment, because they’re so busy trying to get a happy life.

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.

They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us–there is no life.