Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
“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
“Sometimes I look back and think my whole adult life has been underlined with a feeling of waiting – waiting for something to happen, waiting for circumstances to change, waiting for the right man or the right job or the right shoes-and-clothes-and-haircut to swoop down from above and change me, to infuse me from the outside in with a feeling of well-being and validation and peace of mind.”
Caroline Knapp, “Clearing Up: Grief in Sobriety, Confronting Loss Once More, with Feeling,” from The Merry Recluse
“The question is not what you look at—but how you look & whether you see.”
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1851
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
Willa Cather, My Antonia
“Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognize his powers for good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognize that this power is not unlimited.”
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, The Map of Life
“But I don’t think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.”
Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 3
“In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it: They must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it.”
John Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism
