Happiness quotes, explained

The opening of the poem that shaped the modern American Santa Claus: a jolly, round St. Nicholas who arrives on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer and comes down the chimney.

The first line of Keats's long poem Endymion: beautiful things never lose their power to delight us, and their loveliness grows over time instead of fading.

Latin for “love of fate.” Nietzsche used it for the attitude of wanting your life exactly as it is, hard parts included, instead of merely putting up with it.

If you spend even a little less than you earn, you are fine. If you spend even a little more, you are in trouble. The size of the gap matters less than which side of the line you are on.

Latin for “seize the day,” or more literally “pluck the day” like ripe fruit. Horace tells a friend to enjoy today instead of worrying about a future no one can know.

Thoreau explains why he moved to Walden Pond: to strip life down to its essentials and find out what it really has to teach, so that he would not reach death and discover he had not lived.

Latin for “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” Juvenal says that if you must pray for something, pray for these, not for wealth, power or a long life.

At a holiday gathering, don't dwell on what the year has taken from you. Count what you still have, because everyone has many blessings and every life has some sorrow.

Thoreau argues that most people work themselves to exhaustion for things they don't need, and hide their despair behind ordinary routines. Walden is his experiment in living otherwise.

Steady, useful work protects us from three things that ruin lives: having nothing to do, falling into bad habits, and being poor.

The present day is never ordinary. Emerson warns against the illusion that the important moment is always somewhere else, and says today is the critical, decisive day.