Dear Hope Nation,
In writing these daily letters, I think a lot about what readers tell me. Some of the letters that most impressed me when I posted them impose “meh” on most readers. Likewise, some letters I don’t think much of turn out to be very popular. As an example, four or five times I’ve pulled together quotes and sent them out, and every one of them has gotten a very positive response. Each time, I feel like I’m failing, as though there is some vast readership that waits with bated breath for the next morsel from Keith.
There isn’t.
Today I experience joy, beauty and happiness. While that could be the universal human experience, it’s not. More pointedly, that could be my constant human experience but it’s not. Today, though, my positivity receptors are wide open, and I’d like to share some very positive quotes with you.
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“All of life is peaks and valleys.
Don’t let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low.” —John Wooden
“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense
of living is joy enough.” —Emily Dickinson
“Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life; mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There’s a great joy in my giving. It’s thrilling. It’s exhilarating. It’s important to be a part of sharing.”—W. Clement Stone
“The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”– William Morris
“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”– William Saroyan
“As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.”– Andrew Delbanco
“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”– Baruch Spinoza
“Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”– Benjamin Franklin
“Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”– Immanuel Kant
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”– Bertrand Russell
“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”– Buddha
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”– Carl Jung
“The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.”– Carrie Jones
“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”– Charlotte Bronte
“If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.”– Chinese proverb
“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”– Chuck Palahniuk
“Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.”– Cynthia Nelms
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”– Dale Carnegie
“People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat – that’s the only moral they know.”– Dany Laferrière
“We can’t control the world. We can only (barely) control our own reactions to it. Happiness is largely a choice, not a right or entitlement.”– David C. Hill
“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”– Denis Waitley
“The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.”– Doug Larson
“Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.”– Douglas Jerrold
You matter. I matter. We matter.
Best,
Keith