Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing second, the gratification of ones family and friends and lastly, the solid cash. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
And to my thinking as a lover of life, butterflies, soap-bubbles, and whatever is of their kind among men, know most of happiness. To see these light, foolish, delicate, mobile little souls flitting about—that moveth Zarathustra to tears and to song. – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), “Of Reading and Writing,” Thus Spake Zarathus