Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs, it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually, just as we monitor money and GDP.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

William Blake

You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.

George Bernard Shaw, Candida, Ac

Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.

Oscar Wilde

God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.

Chester W. Nimitz

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Official truths are often powerful illusions

John Pilger

Maybe it's just that some of us have had certain facts and truths slapped up against our heads so hard and so often that we have to see them and pay our respects to their reality.

Ralph Ellison in Juneteenth

Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

Ambrose Bierce

People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman; but if a man doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him.

Art Buchwald, Have I Ever Lied t

Indulge not thyself in the passion of anger; it is whetting a sword to wound thine own breast, or murder thy friend.

Akhenaton

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

Saul Bellow

So I think it is common knowledge that Hitchcock had fantasies or whatever you want to call them about his leading ladies.

Tippi Hedren