Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn’t even know it. You didn’t know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying good-bye.”
“Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next.”
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
“What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a red horse in the vacant lot at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulphur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?”
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Witness”
“Sartaj was thinking about how uncanny an animal this life was, that you had to seize it and let go of it at the same time, that you had to enjoy but also plan, live every minute and die every moment.”
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games
“Humor is the antidote to overthinking. It’s a way of saying that life is paradoxical. Humor contains contradictions; it does not resolve them but revels in them. It says that the right way to exist among the contradictions, paradoxes, and absurdities of life is to cope with them through laughter.”
Bob Mankoff, How About Never: Is Never Good For You?
“The fire had burned to embers, the company was gone. We walked in the icy darkness with the old, limping dog. Nothing on the empty road, no cars, no sound, no lights. The year turning, cold stars above. My arm around her. Feeling of courage. Great desire to live on.”
James Salter, Burning the Days
“The brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy.”
Thérèse de Lisieux, Story of a Soul
“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
“The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
Carl Jung, Psychological Types
“We can only know others by ourselves.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays
“The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
