“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much”
Variant: Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Variant: All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.
Source: Pensées
“To understand is to forgive.”
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
Often misattributed to Twain, this is actually by Blaise Pascal, "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657:
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Translation: I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the opportunity to make it shorter.
Misattributed
Source: The Provincial Letters
“It is better to know something about everything then everything about something”
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
“You can achieve anything in life. It just depends on how desperate you are to achieve it.”
The Race of My Life: An Autobiography Milkha Singh (2013)
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Attributed on the internet but not found in print prior to an attribution in Aero Digest, Vols. 58–59, 1949, p. 115 https://books.google.com/books?id=q2ofAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Life+is+simple%22+but+we+insist+on+making+it+complicated&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Life+is+simple%22+
Misattributed, Not Chinese
“Pooh, how do you spell love?' 'You don't spell love Piglet, you feel it”
Variant: How do you spell love?
You don't spell it, you feel it.
“Love is so short and forgetting is so long.”
Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido.
"Tonight I Can Write" (Puedo Escribir), XX, p. 51.
Variant: Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
“Love should not be polluted with friendship.”
Source: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
Variant: A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
“Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.”
As quoted by LIFE magazine (2 May 1955)
1950s
Variant: Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
“The head talks to the heart and the heart talks to the feet.”
