Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“I get so much comfort in thinking of our long friendship, and how it has grown so much stronger through the years, binding us all together. If I didn’t have those things at the bottom of my heart I wouldn’t get much out of blue seas or sunny lands.”
Willa Cather, Letters
“You can never predict what little things in the way somebody looks or talks or acts will set off peculiar emotional reactions in other people.”
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to Be and Back Again)
“I can recall in my childhood the continuous excitement of long days in which nothing happened; and an indescribable sense of fullness in large and empty rooms. And with whatever I retain of childishness…I still feel a very strong and positive pleasure in being stranded in queer quiet places, in neglected corners where nothing happens and anything may happen; in unfashionable hotels, in empty waiting-rooms, or in watering-places out of the season. It seems as if we needed such places, and sufficient solitude in them, to let certain nameless suggestions soak into us and make a richer soil of the unconscious.”
G. K. Chesterton, “On the Thrills of Boredom”
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way…To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion,–all in one.”
John Ruskin, Modern Painters
“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“I think that it is useless to fight directly against natural weaknesses…in the ordinary course of life one has to know these weaknesses, prudently take them into account, and strive to turn them to good purpose; for they are all capable of being put to some good purpose.”
Simone Weil, Waiting For God
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
Willa Cather, My Ántonia
“Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad habits.”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
