The Book of Joy. The Sunday Times Bestseller

Generosity was so important for our survival that the reward centers of our brain light up as strongly when we give as when we receive, sometimes even more

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk and scholar who spent a great deal of time in Christian–Buddhist interfaith dialogue, has explained, “It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment, with all the opportunity th

The more we turn toward others, the more joy we experience, and the more joy we experience, the more we can bring joy to others.

The goal is not just to create joy for ourselves but, as the Archbishop poetically phrased it, “to be a reservoir of joy, an oasis of peace, a pool of serenity that can ripple out to all those around you.”

When you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share.

life on our planet. This is the power we wield.

stress is simply the brain’s way of signaling that something is important.

The things that divide us (our ethnicity, our race, our nationality, even our gender) are much less significant than the things that unite us: our common humanity, our human emotions, and our fundamental desire to be happy and avoid suffering.

There is a Tibetan saying that wisdom is like rainwater—both gather in the low places.