Quotes Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
“We lived the whole of our early lives under the rule of postponement: life was not in the present, it was always ahead of us. Somewhere in the future we would be the people we intended to be.”
Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey
“It takes wit, and interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish, and spirits must flow. There must be courage. There are no easy ruts to get into which lead to happiness.”
Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
“Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there–I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television–you don’t feel anything.
Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television. When you’re really really involved with something, you’re usually thinking about something else. When something’s happening, you fantasize about other things.”
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
“We would rather see those to whom we do good, than those who do good to us.”
La Rochefoucauld, Collected Maxims and Other Reflections
It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in the most enchanted colours…and the man may squander his estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of pleasure.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“It is often to the wary that the events in life are unexpected. Looser types – people who are not busy weighing and measuring every little thing – are used to accidents, coincidences, chance, things getting out of hand, things sneaking up on them. They are the happy children of life, to whom life happens for better or worse.”
Laurie Colwin, “A Mythological Subject,” in The Lone Pilgrim
“Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
“If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.”
Samuel Johnson, Selected Writings
“It is not easy to know what you like.
Most people fool themselves their entire lives through about this.”
Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”
Arnold Toynbee
“As long as man is growing, and the sap rises in him, how spacious and pleasant seems to him the World! He stretches out his branches and fancies his head will reach the Heavens.”
Johann Gottfried von Herder
“O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.”
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, “God’s World”
