Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.”
Marge Piercy, “Colors Passing Through Us”
“Now and then it is a joy to have one’s table red with wine and roses.”
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
“A red flower placed in a window may expand its influence over all the area of your sight.”
Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
“Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair. ”
“Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.”
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself, 46”
“One does not ‘find oneself’ by pursuing one’s self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through some discipline or routine (even the routine of making beds) who one is and wants to be.”
May Sarton, The House by the Sea
“The surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time.”
W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays
“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Neither does the tree hold back its leaves but lets them flow open or glide away when the time is right.”
Mary Oliver, “Habits, Differences, and the Light That Abides,” Long Life
“I didn’t know when I was coming back, but I knew I wouldn’t be the same on my return…If there was anyone I needed to get away from, it was me.”
Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own: Stories from My Life
“If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.”
James Baldwin, James Baldwin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years go. The second best time is now.”
Proverb
“Home is a physical space; it’s also a state of mind.’
Gretchen Rubin
