Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.

Smiling at someone can have significant health consequences.

Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we often do not know where and how to find genuine happiness and so make the mistakes that cause suffering for ourselves & others.

When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness.

Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier.

For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance.

The idea that traumatic residues—or unresolved stories—can be inherited is groundbreaking.

The unconscious mind is a vast repository of experiences and associations that sorts things out much faster than the slow-moving conscious mind.

Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else’s success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.

Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.

Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

later down the road of life, i made the discovery that salt water was also good for the mental abrasions one inevitably acquires on land.

...the administration of the law can never go lax where every individual sees to it that it grows not lax in his own case, or in cases which fall under his eyes.

U.S. Constitution declares rather unambiguously that Congress has the responsibility to “declare war.

I'm actually a lot happier because I work as a teacher; more than just a capitalist making money for myself.

They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

Instead of announcing what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so.

The world feels overwhelming to me on every level. Just the number of organisms that live on this planet. Our politics, our violence, psychology, emotions; there's just a lot going on, right?