the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant/mood lifter.

When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you

Contagious smiling (and frowning and scowling and so on) is the basis of reading others' emotions and registering how you should, in turn, feel.

We tend to mimic the smiles or frowns of others because it helps us better understand what other people are feeling, allowing us to respond appropriately.

Evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry allows us to empathize with and even experience other people's feelings.

“Facial mimicry certainly plays some role, and perhaps a key role, in understanding other people’s emotional states,” Dr. Kevin Ochsner

A person's ability to recognize and "share" others' emotions can be inhibited when they can't mimic faces, even from something as simple as long-term pacifier use.

you mimic their expression unconsciously, which then tells your brain what to feel. All this happens in a few hundred milliseconds.

We are unconsciously learning things by what we see and that's why infants mimic their parents behavior. When they smile to them, they smile back.

Each time you smile, you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. The act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness.

smiling activates the release of neuropeptides that work toward fighting off stress.

when you view a person smiling, you actually feel rewarded.

When you smile,you are creating a symbiotic relationship that allows both of you to release feel-good chemicals in your brain, activate reward centers, make you both more attractive, and increase the chances of you both living longer, healthier lives.

First stage: You see an expressive face You need to know what the expression means so you can react effectively.

Second stage: You simulate the facial expression Simulation uses the same areas of your brain that cause your facial expressions- it may therefore cause you to mimic the expression.

Third stage: The simulation tells you how it feels to make that expression The context or your knowledge about the expresser may have an influence.

This quick, automatic, and unconscious process allows you to connect the subtle emotion signals of others to your own emotion experiences.

Smiling makes us happier Smiling triggers a reduction in stress-enhancing hormones and increases the production of mood-enhancing hormones.

Even forcing a “fake” smile when you’re not truly feeling it has been shown to reduce stress and result in more positive feelings.

Genuine smiles might help people see eye-to-eye during interactions. People who often make genuine smiles may have an easier time convincing others to adopt their goals.

The world is simply a better place when you smile.

For a long time on Earth humans didn't worship good gods; that's a new idea. The ancient Greek gods, the Hindu gods, are fairly amoral, most of them. We get stuck when we insist that God be both good and all-powerful.

There are others who aim at popularity under the disguise of patriotism.

The theory of undirected evolution is already dead, but the work of science continues.

I've always seen architecture as a healing art, not just as a beautification art.

The best cookies of all in the world are the ones my daughter Sally makes. They come out all uniform with nice little air holes.

Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts.

Don't even try to talk to me when I'm watching the moon. That's my moon, baby.

Success is attaining your dream while helping others to benefit from that dream materializing.

During our travels, the Indians entertained me well; and their affection for me was so great, that they utterly refused to leave me there with the others, although the Governor offered them one hundred pounds sterling for me, on purpose to give me a parole to go home.

I have come far, but not far enough. It is still a man's world.

There are many roads to prosperity, but one must be taken. Inaction leads nowhere.

Oh, you know. I am secretary of state. My trips aren't successful. I just talk to people.

Something I've learned being in this industry for so long is that if you want to work with somebody, call them up. Very few musicians have any illusions about genre boundaries. They are useful descriptive terms, but they don't really bind musicians.

I don't go anywhere without Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream. On airplanes, I slather it on my face and lips - I know I look crazy, and I don't care!

As a coach you need to cultivate an important character trait which is your desire and passion to help and inspire others.

How did this or that change my music? The only time I have to think about it is when an interviewer asks me that.

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

I've loved to be a part of anything, having an opportunity to entertain, to be a part of a film, or just continue to do what I'm doing, I'm so happy, so just making town after town, doing my thing, but if I have that opportunity to star in a film or be an extra, I don't care; its all a learning experience for me.

A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.

How did it happen that an enlightened country like Germany was pulled into Nazism? That question has occupied me since 'The Tin Drum,' my first book. The story also shows that we can never know how a person's life will unfold; there is no guarantee that a person will do what is right and avoid what is not right.

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

I have always considered myself to be spiritual in a way that has less to do with religion and more with an awareness that you have, and the consciousness you have of being alive and the consciousness that you will be dead.