I was born in France. My father was a renowned French philosopher and journalist, and my mother was a painter. So I grew up in Parisian intellectual circles.

Worries are pointless. If there's a solution, there's no need to worry. If no solution exists, there's no point to worry.

Nothing goes right on the outside when nothing is going right on the inside.

To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.

Happiness is a skill, emotional balance is a skill, compassion and altruism are skills, and like any skill they need to be developed. That's what education is about.

The basic root of happiness lies in our minds; outer circumstances are nothing more than adverse or favourable.

Let us live simply in the freshness of the present moment, in the clarity of pure awakened mind.

We deal with our mind from morning till evening, and it can be our best friend or our worst enemy.

We all have the ability to study the causes of suffering and gradually to free ourselves from them....it is not the magnitude of the task that matters, it's the magnitude of our courage.

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity, it is a state of being.

Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.

Let your actions be the answer to criticism.

Marriage is about the most expensive way for the average man to get laundry done.

The guys on the stunt team are really fantastic. It's really funny, because for all the aggression they have to display on screen, they're actually really happy, good- natured people.

When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the religion of amulets and holy places and priestcraft: Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes

My son always says I like very weird music.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

I trust the people who are working with me. I delegate.

A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.

Whatsoever has exceeded its proper limit is in an unstable position.

I think it is totally wrong and terribly harmful if education is defined as acquiring knowledge.