In the beginning when I sat next to Tom Brokaw on the 'Today' show the stories I was interested in were those having to do with women and children and learning and health. In those days 25 to 30 years ago that was called soft news and not in a nice way.

One state retiree 49 years old paid over the course of his entire career a total of $124 000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500 000 for health care benefits - a total of $3.8m on a $120 000 investment.

For the last 3 years we have celebrated National Nurses Week. Beginning on May 6 we will once again have the opportunity to truly commend the nursing community for their contributions to our national health delivery system.

They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars over 30 years and saved retirees their pensions. We did it.

The way you think the way you behave the way you eat can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

No period of my life has been one of such unmixed happiness as the four years which have been spent within college walls.

Let us never know what old age is. Let us know the happiness time brings not count the years.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

The thing is when I had my first success it did coincide with the end of my first marriage and because I went on to have a very very unhappy two years I don't think I equate career success with personal happiness.

So I started chanting when I was nineteen which was about twelve years ago and it really had a huge impact on my outlook happiness and general creativity.

Nevertheless whether in occurrences lasting days hours or mere minutes at a time I have experienced happiness often and have had brief encounters with it in my later years even in old age.

I can't believe it's been four years now and from watching that pilot we really all looked like babies. It's unbelievable just how far everything has come. I'm happier now than I've ever been on the show and in my life. I really owe so much of my happiness to 'Glee.'

It is work work that one delights in that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison.

We all have a hungry heart and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading walking around the woods in Ohio where I grew up.

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

From their teenage years on children are considerably more capable of causing parents unhappiness than bringing them happiness. That is one reason parents who rely on their children for happiness make both their children and themselves miserable.

Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others we could have a paradise in a few years.

Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue. Anthropological Commentary The opposite of a trivial truth is false the opposite of a great truth is also true.

I'm sad to report that in the past few years ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.

The '20s ended in an era of extravagance sort of like the one we're in now. There was a big crash but then the country picked itself up again and we had some great years. Those were the days when American believed in itself. I was happy and proud to be painting it.

Fables should be taught as fables myths as myths and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

Call it loyalty call it what you want but I suppose I've got people up here who I'm really tight with we've made a lot of great bonds over the last few years and I've got people in my corner I can trust.

I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software.