Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

There is no large and difficult task that can’t be divided into little, easy tasks.

selfishness to be the main cause of suffering and altruistic love to be the essential ingredient of true happiness.

We must always see the good, the beautiful, in a person, never destroy, always look for someone’s greatness without distinction of religion, caste, or belief.”

Even if we are constitutionally cranky and easy to anger, the latter is always triggered by a particular incident.

love and affection are far more essential to long-term survival. The newborn would last mere hours without her mother's affection; the disabled elderly would soon die without the care of those around them. We need to receive love in order to know how to give it.

After a fit of anger, we often say, “I was out of it,” or “I was not myself.” But when we spontaneously do some act of disinterested kindness, such as helping a human or an animal to recover its health or freedom, or even to escape death, we have the sense of being in harmony with our true nature.

If you keep your mind humble, pride will vanish like morning mist.

Pride, the exacerbation of self-importance, consists of being infatuated with the few qualities we possess and, often, of imagining ourselves to possess those we lack.

The truly humble man never knows that he is humble.”

The humble person has nothing to lose and nothing to gain. If she is praised, she feels that it is humility,

people who overvalue themselves present a higher than average tendency toward aggression.

People who consider themselves superior judge the faults of others more harshly and consider them to be less forgivable.

humble person makes decisions on the basis of what he believes to be right and sticks by them without concern for his own image or the opinions of others.

Further studies have shown that the pessimist’s objective, detached, and wary judgment is inadequate. When it’s a question of real situations drawn from daily life, the optimist’s approach is in fact more realistic and pragmatic than that of the pessimist.

If we observe the way in which people perceive the events of their lives, appreciate the quality of the lived moment, and create their future by overcoming obstacles with an open and creative attitude, we find that the optimists have an undeniable advantage over the pessimists.

pessimists are up to eight times more likely to become depressed when things go wrong;

The optimist, however, trusts that it is possible to achieve her goals and that with patience, resolve, and intelligence, she will ultimately do so. The fact is, more often than not, she does.

if optimism is a way of looking at life and happiness a condition that can be cultivated, one might as well get down to work without further delay.

It is known that hope improves students’ test results and athletes’ performance, makes illness and agonizing debility more bearable, and makes pain itself (from burns, arthritis, spinal injuries, or blindness, for example) easier to tolerate.

The ultimate optimism lies in understanding that every passing moment is a treasure, in joy as in adversity.