Illusive Happiness (Denny)

As he listened to the two voices he was so attached to and thought back to the afternoon, the striking of the clocks, the easy, pleasant company, the walk around the shore, with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech: happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or even fully grasped; it should ne allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed, if it ever comes at all.

from That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern

A slice of humble pie (Denny)...

Remember, you are just an extra in everyone else's play.

Frankilin Delano Roosevelt

This reminds me of another little saying, whose author I either do not know or have forgotten: "Remember that when you die, not everyone at the funeral will be sad."

Although humility is not the same thing as humiliation, it is the one virtue most human beings, by definition, lack.

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

Eugene O'Neill

That's a pretty dark view of life, but, at least for some, it has a ring of truth about it...

Merton (Trisha)

"If you want to identify me, ask not where I live, or what i like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."

Thomas Merton
My Argument with the Gestapo