Tag: Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

Quotes May 07, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 

“There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
Francis Bacon, “Of Beauty”
 
 
 
 
“Julie had always believed that even if it’s the big, unexpected events (good and bad) that make life memorable and occasionally exciting, it’s the small, predictable routines that hold life together and make it worth living.”
Stephen McCauley, My Ex-Life
 
 
 
 
“Speed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast….Of course, slowness is bad. Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy.”
Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings
 
 
 
 
“Man loves company, even if it is only that of a smoldering candle.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg,
 
 
 
 
“From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”
Henry Matisse with Pierre Courthion, Chatting with Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview
 
 
 
 
“Pleasures that are in themselves innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main object of pursuit.”
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, The Map of Life
 
 
 
 
“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

Quotes April 28, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names.”
Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude: Journals vol. 3
 
 
 
 
“Home, I learned, can be anywhere you make it. Home is also the place to which you come back again and again.”
Margaret Mead, Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years
 
 
 
 
“Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval.”
Oscar Wilde
 
 
 
 
“No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.”
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
 
 
 
 
“I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
Willa Cather, My Antonia

Quotes April 22, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 

“I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.”
Jane Kenyon, “Otherwise”
 
 
 
 
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness and Other Stories
 
 
 
 
“Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.”
Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance
 
 
 
 
“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience,” from The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
 
 
 
“Sweet are the uses of adversity, / Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
 
 
 
 
“If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom
 
 
 
 
“What has always pleased me about man is that he, who himself constructs Louvres, everlasting pyramids and churches of St. Peter, can take delight in observing a cell of a honey-comb or a snail-shell.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books
 
 
 
 
“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Quotes April 13, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“My mind works in idleness. To do nothing is often my most profitable way.”
Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1930
 
 
 
 
To a friend troubled by melancholy, Samuel Johnson suggested: “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.”
Samuel Johnson in a letter to James Boswell, 1779
 
 
 
 
“…the true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life…”
William Morris, “The Aims of Art,” in The Collected Works of William Morris
 
 
 
 
“The hallmark of a decision in line with one’s inner development is a feeling of having laid down a burden and picked up a more natural responsibility.”
Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist
 
 
 
 
“Endure, and keep yourselves for days of happiness.”
Virgil, The Aeneid
 
 
 
 
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
 
 
 
 
“One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make someone else happy. One of the best ways to make someone else happy is to be happy yourself.”
Gretchen Rubin

Quotes April 04, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Endure, and keep yourselves for days of happiness.”
Virgil, The Aeneid
 
 
 
 
“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
 
 
 
 
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books
 
 
 
 
“We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”
Winston Churchill, Broadcast to the United States, 1941
 
 
 
 
“I don’t know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don’t identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.”
Alberto Giacometti, Giacometti: A Biography by James Lord
 
 
 
 

Quotes March 30, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
Winston Churchill, Speech, 1940
 
 
 
 
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
 
 
 
 
“Though still very far from being perfect girls, each was slowly learning, in her own way, one of the three lessons all are the better for knowing – that cheerfulness can change misfortune into love and friends; that in ordering one’s self aright one helps others to do the same; and that the power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”
Louisa May Alcott, Jack and Jill
 
 
 
 
“When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.”
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
 
 
 
 
“The fact is, that, of all God’s gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn…The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.”
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
 
 
 
 
“There is only one time that is important – Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”
Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live By and Other Tales
 
 
 
 
“Make people happier by acknowledging that they’re not feeling happy.”
Gretchen Rubin
 
 
 
 

Quotes March 21, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.”
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
 
 
 
 
“Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”
William Wordsworth, Personal Talk
 
 
 
 
“Silence was the cure, if only temporarily, silence and geography. But of what was I being cured? I do not know, have never known. I only know the cure. Silence, and no connections except to landscape.”
Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I Was Young
 
 
 
 
“Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
 
 
 
 
“Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.”
Ovid
 
 
 
 

Quotes March 16, 2020

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

Quotes March 04, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
 
 
 
 
“The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you.”
Jean de La Bruyère, “Of Society and Conversation,” The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère
 
 
 
 
“Sometimes I look back and think my whole adult life has been underlined with a feeling of waiting – waiting for something to happen, waiting for circumstances to change, waiting for the right man or the right job or the right shoes-and-clothes-and-haircut to swoop down from above and change me, to infuse me from the outside in with a feeling of well-being and validation and peace of mind.”
Caroline Knapp, “Clearing Up: Grief in Sobriety, Confronting Loss Once More, with Feeling,” from The Merry Recluse
 
 
 
 
“The question is not what you look at—but how you look & whether you see.”
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1851
 
 
 
 
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
Willa Cather, My Antonia
 
 
 
 
“Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognize his powers for good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognize that this power is not unlimited.”
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, The Map of Life
 
 
 
 
“But I don’t think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.”
Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 3
 
 
 
 
“In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it: They must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it.”
John Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism

Quotes February 24, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
Peter Brooks, The Empty Space
 
 
 
 
“The best kind of laughter is laughter born of a shared memory.”
Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?
 
 
 
 
“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
 
 
 
 
“Sight is often reinforced by the other senses. A rose looks different when you can smell it. A ballroom looks different when you can hear music. Whenever I saw the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, I would be apt to play the ‘Marseillaise’ in my mind, and the monument somehow seemed grander and more real.”
Henry Grunwald, Twilight: Losing Sight, Gaining Insight
 
 
 
 
“When one loves, one does not calculate.”
St. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul
 
 
 
 
“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
 
 
 
 

“A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings
 
 
 
 

“You can’t run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero’s journey.”
Anne Lamott, “Twelve Truths I Learned from Writing to Life”
 
 
 
 
“There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things.”
Wallace Stevens, Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self
 
 
 
 
“With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
 
 
 
 
“I don’t know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don’t identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.”
Giacometti, Giacometti: A Biography by James Lord