Quotes from William Lyon Phelps

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded upon a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.

The highest happiness on earth is the happiness of marriage.

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.

Two persons who love each other are in a place more holy than the interior of a church.

If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care the happiest, individual would not be either a man or a woman it; it would be, I think a cow.

Never try to outsmart a woman, unless you are another woman.

The highest happiness on earth is marriage.

There is a strange reluctance on the part of most people to admit they enjoy life.

Whenever it is in any way possible, every boy and girl should choose as his life work some occupation which he should like to do anyhow, even if he did not need the money.

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.

If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.

My religious faith remains in possession of the field only after prolonged civil war with my naturally skeptical mind.

The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.

That daily life is really good one appreciates when one wakes from a horrible dream or when one takes the first outing after a sickness. Why not realize it now?

To a man the greatest blessing is individual liberty; to a dog it is the last word in despair.

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation -- what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.