Quotes courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
“Nature is a Haunted House – but Art – a House that tries to be haunted.”
Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“In everything…leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth. Someone once told me, ‘Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished.’”
Essays in Idleness, The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko
“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
“When they had eventually calmed down a bit, and had gotten home, Mr. Duncan put the magic pebble in an iron safe. Some day they might want to use it, but really, for now, what more could they wish for? They all had all that they wanted.”
William Steig, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
“With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
“Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice.”
Elias Canetti, Notes from Hampstead
“I meant, I have said, to climb the Matterhorn. Why? Let’s say because I was there. No: I’m being flip. I meant to climb the Matterhorn because to climb it was for me so improbable. For too many years now I had failed to surprise myself, to reach beyond my grasp.”
Geoffrey Wolff, A Day at the Beach, “Matterhorn”
“It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
