Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“The Little House was very happy as she sat on the hill and watched the countryside around her. She watched the sun rise in the morning and she watched the sun set in the evening. Day followed day, each one a little different from the one before . . . but the Little House stayed just the same.”
Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House
“On a really clean tablecloth, the smallest speck of dirt annoys the eye. At high altitudes, a moment’s self-indulgence may mean death.”
Dag Hammarskjold, Markings
“Silence is a strange thing to us who live: we desire it, we fear it, we worship it, we hate it. There is a divinity about cats, as long as they are silent: the silence of swans gives them an air of legend.”
Keith Douglas, Alamein to Zem Zem
“When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More or less like people—a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes.”
Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays
“In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.”
Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance
“It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading, and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires.”
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
