The Happiness Project

Loving Kindness and the Less Exhilarating Elements of Goodness

“Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists and makes it a little less difficult to practice those minor virtues of self-control and self-restraint, patience, discipline, and tolerance, which are the passive and not very exhilarating elements of goodness. Goodness is the only value that seems in this world of appearances to have any claim to be an end in itself. Virtue is its own reward. I am ashamed to have reached so commonplace a conclusion. … I have gone a long way round to discover what everyone knew already.”—W. Somerset Maugham

* If you haven’t seen my one-minute movie, The Years Are Short , you might enjoy seeing that.