I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves. – Wilhelm von Humboldt

If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. – Epictetus