“Happiness is possible only in a relationship with a partner. Imagine that some fellow who has lived his life as a singer goes to an uninhabited island and sings as loudly as possible. If there is no one there to hear him, he will not be happy. To realize that we exist for the sake of others is the great achievement that changes our lives. When we realize that our life is not ours alone but is meant to be for the sake of the other, we begin to follow a path different from the one we were on. Just as singing to yourself will not make you happy, there is no joy without a partner. Even the smallest and most trivial thing can bring you happiness when you do it for another.”

“We need to know ourselves better so that we can realize what we really want in our life. I think that the first condition for a person to be in a successful relationship is to be happy with the person he or she is, in other words to love themselves.”

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”

“The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable, and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe.”

“We were one in our aim; only our paths were different.”

“Yoga teaches that whatever we want in life we can have if we are willing to provide it for others. So if yogis want to be free, they understand that to deprive others of freedom will ultimately not benefit their project—to be free themselves. Following that logic, yogis abhor slavery and examine their own lives to find ways that they themselves might be condoning slavery and then eradicate those ways of acting. The fact is that animals who are raised for food are slaves. Making kind choices when it comes to the food we eat is one of the most basic ways to begin to ensure our own happiness and freedom. The cause for our own happiness, health, and freedom lies in how happy and free we can make the lives of others. The definition of others includes other animals.”

“May we not imagine that possibly this earthly life of ours is to the other life what sleeping is to waking? May not all our life be a dream and death an awakening? But an awakening to what? And supposing that everything is but the dream of God and that God one day will awaken? Will He remember His dream?”

“And we think that this ultimate blessedness differs only in degree from the happy and joyful experiences of our lives. Whereas the truth is that it differs in kind. The joys, not only of the earth, but of any conceivable heaven - which we can conceive only as some happy and fortunate prolongation of our lives in time - are not of the same order as that ultimate blessedness.”

“The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.”

“We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”