Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“Hurry, hurry, open every door! says my heart.”
Mary Oliver, “Habits, Differences, and the Light That Abides,” Long Life: Essays and Other Writings
“And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.”
John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs
“Happiness is a place between too much and too little.”
Finnish proverb
“Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.”
Bertrand Russell, Conquest 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
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy, “Three Methods Of Reform,” Pamphlets: Translated from the Russian
“I would like to become tolerant without overlooking anything, persecute no one even when all people persecute me; become better without noticing it; become sadder, but enjoy living; become more serene, be happy in others; belong to no one, grow in everyone; love the best, comfort the worst; not even hate myself anymore.”
Elias Canetti, The Human Province
“Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.”
Gertrude Stein, Paris France
“Don’t cut what you can untie.”
Joubert“
“It isn’t enough to love; we must prove it.”
St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul
“It is all a question of weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable surprises.”
M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
“We finger the world around us with our senses, which deliver it to us in an idiosyncratic formulation. Our bodies serve to introduce the world to us.”
Anne Truitt, Turn: The Journal of an Artist
“The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you.”
Jean de La Bruyère, “Of Society and Conversation,” The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère
