“Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “On Love”
“Not that she didn’t enjoy the holidays: but she always felt—and it was, perhaps, the measure of her peculiar happiness—a little relieved when they were over. Her normal life pleased her so well that she was half afraid to step out of its frame in case one day she should find herself unable to get back.”
“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”
“One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More or less like people—a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes.”
Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays
“In our play we reveal what kind of people we are.”
“Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.”
“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
Ovid
“There is something magical about beginnings, about the challenges that come with territory not yet conquered, about being the underdog. I think I’d far rather stand at the beginning of something, looking up, rather than at a summit, looking down.”
Jo Malone, My Story
“The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star.”
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
“Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”
Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams Reflections
“The most valuable thing for life never changes by time or place—it is to be honest and cheerful, to find happiness in what you have, and to have courage in hardships.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.”
Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance
“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.”
Samuel Johnson, “Milton”
