Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—”
Emily Dickinson
“For me, the challenge of middle age was not to stand still.”
Jon Katz, A Dog Year
“Pleasures that are in themselves innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main object of pursuit.”
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, The Map of Life
“My laboratory is a place where the lights are always on. My laboratory has no windows, but it needs none. It is self-contained. It is its own world. My lab is both private and familiar, populated by a small number of people who know one another well. My lab is the place where I put my brain out on my fingers and I do things. My lab is a place where I move. I stand, walk, sit, fetch, carry, climb, and crawl. My lab is a place where it’s just as well that I can’t sleep, because there are so many things to do in the world besides that. My lab is a place where it matters if I get hurt. There are warnings and rules designed to protect me. I wear gloves, glasses, and closed-toed shoes to shield myself against disastrous mistakes. In my lab, whatever I need is greatly outbalanced by what I have. The drawers are packed full with items that might come in handy. Every object in my lab—no matter how small or misshapen—exists for a reason, even if its purpose has not yet been found.
“My lab is a place where my guilt over what I haven’t done is supplanted by all of the things that I am getting done. My uncalled parents, unpaid credit cards, unwashed dishes, and unshaved legs pale in comparison to the noble breakthrough under pursuit. My lab is a place where I can be the child that I still am. It is the place where I can play with my best friend.”
Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
“At such moments I don’t think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: ‘Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you’re not part of it.’ My advice is: ‘Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.’
“I don’t think Mother’s advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You’d be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who’s happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”
Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, March 6, 1944
“Complete inactivity in the end has the same effect as prolonged overwork, in the mental sphere as much as in the life of the body and the muscles.”
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
Seneca
“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
“The [hay] rack stood as if it had been there forever across the landscape and lit by the sun with its long shadow behind it, and in harmony with every fold of the field and finally turned into a mere form, a primordial form, even if that was not the word I used then, and it gave me huge pleasure just to look at it. I can still feel the same thing today when I see a hayrack in a photograph from a book, but all that is a thing of the past now…so the feeling of pleasure slips into the feeling that time has passed, that it is very long ago, and the sudden feeling of being old.”
Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses
