“I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.”

The Power of Now (1997)

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Liberty Magazine : On complaints by frontier folks on his reforms.

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 1

Source: Success! (1977), p. 145
Context: Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you derive from what you do. If you are in a job you hate, face the fact squarely and get out. You may earn a good living, you may have a safe career, but you will never be a success. Find out what you enjoy doing, and your chances of succeeding will be dramatically better. We play the game every day, sometimes without even recognizing that we're doing it. We compete with other people, or other teams, or other companies, not only because it is essential to business survival, but because we frankly enjoy competition. It's fun to be in the game, and it's even more fun to win.

Source: The Art of Travel

Letter to John Adams (1816)
1810s

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
Context: The force which makes for war does not derive its strength from the interested motives of evil men; it derives its strength from the disinterested motives of good men. Pacifists have sometimes evaded that truth as making too great a concession to Mars, as seeming to imply (which it does not in fact) that in order to abolish war, men must cease to be noble.
Base motives are, of course, among those which make up the forces that produce war. Base motives are among those which get great cathedrals built and hospitals constructed-contractors' profit-seeking, the vested interests of doctors and clergy. But Europe has not been covered by cathedrals because contractors wanted to make money, or priests wanted jobs.

Quoted in "Table Talk" http://books.google.com/books?id=LIxUAAAAcAAJ&q=%22greatest+pleasure+I+know+is+to+do+a+good+action+by+stealth+and+to+have+it+found+out+by+accident%22&pg=PA14#v=onepage in The Athenaeum magazine (4 January 1834).