Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organise and concentrate—or else get fragmented into bits.
RUMMER GODDEN
A House with Four Rooms
The different and the novel are sweet, but regularity and repetition are also teachers.
MARY OLIVER
Long Life
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
GEORGE SAUNDERS
Syracuse University Commencement Address, 2013
The things that we love tell us what we are.
THOMAS MERTON
Thoughts in Solitude
I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Elizabeth Holland, 1856
One of the pleasures of getting older is that one can get so much nearer to one’s own people, and that the dear ones of them become dearer all the time.
WILLA CATHER
The Selected Letters of Willa Cather
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time.
JAMES BALDWIN
Nothing Personal
To be interested in the changing seasons is … a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
“Justification of Art”
I don’t know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don’t identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
Giacometti: A Biography
Though still very far from being perfect girls, each was slowly learning, in her own way, one of the three lessons all are the better for knowing – that cheerfulness can change misfortune into love and friends; that in ordering one’s self aright one helps others to do the same; and that the power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jack and Jill
“Proverbs of the Professions”
Stunt coordinator: If you’re not working, you’re training.
Emergency manager: Disaster is the wrong time to exchange business cards.
Poker player: If you can’t spot the fish at the table, you’re the fish.
Photographer: Zoom with your feet (get closer to a subject rather than zoom onto it).
Restaurant manager: If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.
Teacher: The children who are hardest to love need it most.
Rancher: Always leave a gate the way you found it.
