Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway - Sydney J. Harris

Freud's prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.

Nice things are done for our own sake, not for the sake of others. The pleasure must reside in the performance, not in the applause. Good deeds are, in a deeper psychological way, a favor to oneself. If this is not grasped, then our whole sense of personal relationships becomes warped.

When I hear somebody sigh that "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"