“Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness.”

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps -- what more can the heart of man desire?”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

“It bewildered Ig, the idea that a person could not be interested in music. It was like not being interested in happiness.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

“My aversion from music rests on political grounds.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

“I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

“Love is pretty much a decision anyway. Just like happiness. You can decide to either love someone or not, be happy or not. The rest is just commitment to the idea.”

Caprice Crane (1970) American writer

“My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

“Music is my mother and my father; it is my work and my rest… my blood… my compass… my love…”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

“Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

“Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic