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“Happiness implies resource and security; it can be achieved only by discipline.”
Stable happiness is linked with cultivated capacity and order rather than with impulse, luck, or momentary pleasure alone.
Source note: The Life of Reason; Santayana connects happiness with disciplined resources and a secure basis for living.
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“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.”
Thoreau asks for direct engagement with the life actually present rather than contempt for it because it falls short of wealth, status or imagined alternatives.
Source note: Walden, “Conclusion,” Project Gutenberg #205. The sentence opens a passage urging the reader to “Love your life, poor as it is” and noting that a quiet mind may live contentedly even in materially poor circumstances. It is not an argument that poverty or injustice should never be changed.
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“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”
Voice: Reported speaker · Jesus
The promise distinguishes inward peace from security based only on changing external circumstances, placing calm within a spiritual relationship rather than worldly control.
Source note: John 14:27 in the King James Version; the verse continues, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
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“’Tis my opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself.”
Montaigne distinguishes participating in other people’s affairs from surrendering one’s whole inward life to them: engagement can be generous without allowing every external demand to possess the will.
Source note: Essays, Book III, Chapter X, “Of Managing the Will,” Charles Cotton translation; Project Gutenberg Complete Essays #3600, with the chapter also preserved in Gutenberg volume #3598. Montaigne is describing his personal method of limiting how strongly public affairs and external attachments possess him, not issuing a universal therapy rule.
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“The readiness is all.”
Voice: Fictional character · Hamlet
The emphasis is not on controlling every outcome but on meeting what comes with preparedness and acceptance.
Source note: Act 5, Scene 2.
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“He restoreth my soul.”
Restoration is expressed as renewal of the inner person, a compact image for recovering steadiness after depletion, fear, or difficulty.
Source note: Psalm 23:3 in the King James Version; restoration follows the psalm’s images of rest and still waters.