1. “Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body.”
2. ”Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
3. “Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”
4. “However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight.”
5. ”I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.”
6. “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.”
7. “I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living that one needs.”
8. “Is it not sufficient that old people ARE something? It is necessary that they must be forever DOING something? The loss of the capacity for loafing is bad enough in men of middle age, but the same loss in old age is a crime committed against human nature.”
9. “Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.”
10. “Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.”
11. “The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living.”
12. “The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.”
13. ”The wise man reads both books and life itself.”
14. “This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.”
15. “What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?”
16. “You learnt that, whatever you are doing in life, obstacles don't matter very much. Pain or other circumstances can be there, but if you want to do a job bad enough, you'll find a way to get it done.”
