Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
An Inland Voyage
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
He was like a man owning a piece of ground in which, unknown to himself, a treasure lay buried. You would not call such a man rich, neither would I call happy the man who is so without realizing it.
EUGENE DELACROIX
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix
Whatever fate befalls you, do not give way to great rejoicings or great lamentation; partly because all things are full of change, and your fortune may turn at any moment; partly because men are so apt to be deceived in their judgment as to what is good or bad for them.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Selected Writings
Time is a river that carries me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
“A New Refutation of Time”
We lived the whole of our early lives under the rule of postponement: life was not in the present, it was always ahead of us. Somewhere in the future we would be the people we intended to be.
DIANA TRILLING
The Beginning of the Journey
When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON
Gilead
If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.
WALTER BENJAMIN
“The Storyteller”
There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.
JOHN CAGE
Silence
I have reached the stage now where luxury is not in fine possessions but in carefree possessions, and the greatest luxury of all would be the completely expendable.
NAN FAIRBROTHER
The House in the Country
An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
MARK TWAIN
Notebook
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
WILLA CATHER
My Antonia
I have not been inordinately materialistic, but I am attached to my house, to my inherited belongings, and to the things that I have chosen for myself. All these objects add complexity to my emotional ties to the people with whom I have shared, and share, my life, and to my aspirations for myself.
ANNE TRUITT
Turn: The Journal of an Artist
Happiness not in another place, but this place…not for
another hour, but this hour…
WALT WHITMAN
Leaves of Grass
To be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
I shall never forget how the red ball of the sun hung on the horizon and raced along with the train for a short space, and then plunged below the belly-band of the earth. There have been other suns that set in significance for me, but that sun! It was a book-mark in the pages of a life.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Dust Tracks on a Road
You can’t run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero’s journey.
ANNE LAMOTT
Twelve Truths I Learned from Writing to Life
What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.
The days are long, but the years are short.
The most important step is the first step.
Pouring out ideas is better for creativity than doling them out by the teaspoon.
GRETCHEN RUBIN
