Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
“We may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious purpose.”
G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles
“This is suffering’s lesson: pay attention. The important part might come in a form you do not recognize.”
Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay
“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
“’Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,’ said his cousin. ‘But we seem to have no other.’”
Ivy Compton-Burnett, Manservant and Maidservant
“Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity and happiness, within those precincts, and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain!”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Threefold Destiny”
“Always, as one arrives, here is the old acceleration of the pulse—the mountainous gray skyline glimpsed from the Triboro Bridge, the cheerful games of basketball and handball being played on the recreational asphalt beside the FDR Drive, the startling, steamy, rain-splotched intimacy of the side streets where one’s taxi slows to a crawl, the careless flung beauty of the pedestrians clumped at the street corners. So many faces, costumes, packages, errands! So many preoccupations, hopes, passions, lives in progress!”
John Updike, “Is New York City Inhabitable?”
“At these best moments a great humility fused with a great ambition: to be only what I was, but to the utmost of what I was.”
Stephen Spender, World Within World
“Most people take action by habit in small things more often than in important things.”
Mary Oliver, “Habits, Differences, and the Light That Abides,” Long Life
