The chief cause of inner unhappiness is egotism or selfishness. He who gives himself importance by boasting is actually showing the credentials of his own worthlessness. Pride is an attempt to create an impression that we are what we actually are not.

Since every increase in quantity among the things we love brings a decrease in the quality of love, there are two ways by which we may hope to keep love pure. One is to give away in proportion as we receive:

Spiritual joy is a serenity of temper in the midst of the changes of life, such as a mountain has when a storm breaks over it.

Society can be saved only if man is saved from his unbearable conflicts, and man can be rescued from them only if his soul is saved.

As John the Baptist said when he saw Our Lord: “I must decrease; He must increase.”

The second way of preserving ourselves from an unseemly greed is the heroic way . . . the way of complete detachment from wealth, as practiced by St. Francis of Assissi and all those who take the vows of poverty.

Full happiness is understood only by those who have denied themselves some legitimate pleasures in order to obtain deferred joys.

Third: Our happiness consists in fulfilling the purpose of our being. Every man knows, from his own unfulfilled hunger for them, that he was built with a capacity for three things of which he never has enough. He wants life—not for the next few minutes, but for always, and with no aging or disease to threaten it. He also wants to grasp truth—not wi

Contentment is not an innate virtue. It is acquired through great resolution and diligence in conquering unruly desires;