Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“Bad luck in small doses can cast a glittering light on the rest of life.”
Ann Patchett, “Sometimes the Luck Is in the Fall,” The New York Times
“Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening and sometimes they arise from the past. Perhaps it’s the same with people.”
James Salter, Burning the Days
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“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
“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Now is life very solid or very shifting? I am haunted by the two contradictions.
VIRGINIA WOOLF, A Writer’s Diary
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT, Mother Night
Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it’s different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.
ANDY WARHOL, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again
Most of us are experts at solving other people’s problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.
NAN FAIRBROTHER, The House in the Country
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to realize it as such.
HENRY MILLER, The Henry Miller Reader
Indolence is a delightful but distressing state: we must be doing something to be happy.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, “On the Pleasure of Painting,” Table Talk
It is curious how the act of writing leads to confession.
SIGRID NUNEZ, The Friend
It is hard, so terribly hard, to please yourself…it is almost the hardest thing in the world, because we are not always comfortable with that true self that lies deep within us.
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, The Nature of Order Book Four: The Luminous Ground
No place to go now but into deep ground.
SARAH M. BROOM, The Yellow House
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
IRIS MURDOCH, A Severed Head
Act the way you want to feel.
You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.
Sometimes circumstances make it impossible for me to be happy, but it’s almost always possible to be happier.
To be happier, we must think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Gretchen Rubin
