1043 – “[Bliss] is like a lighted torch whose flame can be distributed to ever so many other torches which people may bring along; and therewith they will cook food and dispel darkness, while the original torch itself remains burning ever the same. It is even so with the bliss of the Way.”

-Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha

Common Paraphrase [See Source Notes]:

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, And the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

995 – The Story of Two Dogs

“There is a story they tell of two dogs. Both at separate times walk into the same room. Ones comes out wagging its tail, while the other comes out growling. A woman watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so mad. To her surprise she finds a room filled with mirrors. The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him, while the angry dog saw only angry dogs growling back at him. What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are.”

-anonymous

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942 – “A good pen can also remind us of the happiest moments in out lives, bring noble ideas into our dens, our blood and our souls. It can turn tragedy into hope and victory.”

-Nelson Mandela

938 – “Who is happier, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

-Hunter S Thompson

933 – We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.

-Robert Fulghum

923 – “That’s the best revenge of all: happiness. Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone have a good fucking life.”

-Chuck Palahniuk [Attributed]

881 – “Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I shd. say, ‘sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.'”

–C S Lewis

857 – “Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.”

–Aristotle

848 – “It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good. This is instant and infallible happiness.”

–Helen Keller

814 – Jane Smiley on Books

“An inexpensive paperback book from a reputable publisher is a small, rectangular, boxlike object a few inches long, a few inches wide, and an inch or so thick. It is easy to stack and store, easy to buy, keep give away, or throw away. As an object, it is user-friendly and routine, a mature technological form, hard to improve upon and easy to like. Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”

–Jane Smiley