Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
“Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“There are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love…Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself.”
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”
Henry James
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best is right. Every intensification is good.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Energy is the only life, and is from the Body.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“There is in this world no function more important than that of being charming. The forest glade would be incomplete without the humming-bird. To shed joy around, to radiate happiness, to cast light upon dark days, to be the golden thread of our destiny, and the very spirit of grace and harmony, is not this to render a service?”
Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea
“It is harder to fight against pleasure than against anger.”
Heraclitus
“Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world.”
William James
“Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real employment naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does anything but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favour.”
Samuel Johnson, Selected Writings
“Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us therefore be cautious of how we strip her.”
Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy:
For use can almost change the stamp of nature,
And master even the devil, or throw him out,
With wondrous potency.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you’ll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.”
Flannery O’Connor, letter to “A,” 10 Feb 62
“But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
