Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed

People are drastically overconfident about their judgments of others.

We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.

The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.

People are happiest when they're trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach.

People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.

The good news is that going blind is not going to make you as unhappy as you think it will. The bad news is that winning the lottery will not make you as happy as you expect.

Our brain accepts what the eyes see and our eye looks for whatever our brain wants.

The secret of happiness is variety, but the secret of variety, like the secret of all spices, is knowing when to use it.

We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy

Happiness refers to feelings, virtue refers to actions, and those actions can cause those feelings. But not necessarily and not exclusively.

They are the humans who are intelligent enough to have insight of every single molecular underpinning of the warmth of love, and yet not let that factual knowledge ruin the romance in a relationship.

Kellyanne opened the car door and crawled into my bedroom. Her face was puffy and pale and fuzzed-over. She just came in and said: "Ashmol, Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead." That's how she said it.

Life turns to be colorless when people you trust the most ignore in times of sorrow.

The nicest thing about coaching is that one day you feel like you can play handball against a curb, and on other days you feel like you can fly to the moon.

This is painful and it will be for a long time.

The first religious experience that I can remember is getting under the nursery table to pray that the dancing mistress might be dead before we got to the Dancing Class.

The question arises as to whether it is possible not to live in the world of men and still to live in the world.

Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.

A monk is not forbidden to marry, but if he takes a wife she becomes a monk with the same powers and privileges and occupies the same social position as her husband.

Discrimination is simply the act of choice. Scarcity requires us to choose; scarcity is the cause of discrimination!