To watch the corn grow, or the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over the plough or spade; to read, to think, to love, to pray, are the things that make men happy.

Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths.

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.

It is not merriment and wantonness, nor laughter or jesting, the comrade of frivolity, that make men happy; those are happy, often in sadness, whose wills are strong and true.

Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby

Most men are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

It's not the men in your life that matters, it's the life in your men.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure

There will always be men who are justified in this interest in themselves, this detailed observation of their own emotions; poets who can express with clarity and beauty their privileged inner life, and thereby enrich the emotional world of other people.

Men like to think well of themselves, and poets help them do it.

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy.

Each man delights in the work that suits him best.