George Vaillant Quotes

The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.

Our lives become the sum of all whom we have loved. It is important not to waste anyone. One task of living out the last half of life is excavating and recovering all of those whom we loved in the first half. Thus, the recovery of lost loves becomes an important way in which the past affects the present.

The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points to a straightforward five-word conclusion: Happiness is love. Full stop.

Aging happy and well, instead of sad and sick, is at least under some personal control. We have considerable control over our weight, our exercise, our education, and our abuse of cigarettes and alcohol. With hard work and/or therapy, our relationships with our spouses and our coping styles can be changed for the better. A successful old age may lie not so much in our stars and genes as in ourselves.

Joy is connection... The more areas in your life you can make connection, the better.

Life ain't easy. Terrible things happen to everyone. You have to keep your sense of humor, give something of yourself to others, make friends who are younger than you, learn new things, and have fun.

It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.

Happiness is only the cart; love is the horse

It is not stress that kills us. It is effective adaptation to stress that allows us to live.

Our lives are like the talents in the parable of the three stewards. It is something that has been given to us for the time being and we have the opportunity and privilege of doing our best with this precious gift.

Anxiety and depression are the price you pay for a well-lived life.

If you want to treat an illness that has no easy cure, first of all, treat them with hope.

The recent years of the Grant Study have shown that our lives when we are old are the sum of all of our loves.

We can laugh from either joy or happiness, but we weep only from grief or joy...Without the pain of farewell, there is no joy in reunion...without the pain of captivity, we don't experience the joy of freedom.

Whether we live to a vigorous old age lies not so much in our stars or in our genes but in ourselves.

It's very hard, for most of us to tolerate being loved.

Creativity can never be explained by appeal to reason alone. Like the birth of a child, creativity compels us not to explanation but to wonder and awe.