Tag: Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

Quotes February 09, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Choice of attention—to attend to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.”
W.H. Auden, The Complete Works of W. H. Auden, volume VI
 
 
 
 
“An eccentricity made a regular thing of ceases to provoke remark.”
Sylvia Townsend Warner, “Winged Creatures” in Kingdoms of Elfin
 
 
 
 
“What we want out of a vacation changes as we age. It changes from vacation to vacation. There was a time when it was all about culture for me. My idea of a real break was to stay in museums until my legs ached and then go stand in line to get tickets for an opera or a play. Later I became a disciple of relaxation and looked for words like beach and massage when making my plans. I found those little paper umbrellas that balanced on the side of rum drinks to be deeply charming then. Now I strive for transcendent invisibility and the chance to accomplish the things I can’t get done at home. But as I pack up my room at the Hotel Bel-Air, I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.”
Ann Patchett, “Do Not Disturb,” This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
 
 
 
 
“When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you’re working.”
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to Be and Back Again)
 
 
 
 
“I can recall in my childhood the continuous excitement of long days in which nothing happened; and an indescribable sense of fullness in large and empty rooms…I still feel a very strong and positive pleasure in being stranded in queer quiet places, in neglected corners where nothing happens and anything may happen; in unfashionable hotels, in empty waiting-rooms, or in watering-places out of the season. It seems as if we needed such places, and sufficient solitude in them, to let certain nameless suggestions soak into us and make a richer soil of the unconscious.”
G. K. Chesterton, “On the Thrills of Boredom,” All is Grist: Essays
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“We change, but always at a cost: to win this you lose that.”
Geoffrey Wolff, “Apprentice,” A Day at the Beach
 
 
 
 
“In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.”
John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings
 
 
 
 
“Ah! There is nothing like staying home for real comfort.”
Jane Austen, Emma
 
 
 
 
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Archilochus
 
 
 
 
“Everything becomes interesting when it’s put under a glass case.”
Gretchen Rubin
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Quotes January 25, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., Draft of “Love in Action”
 
 
 
 
“I am a great believer in the seasons. Even here in my own world, I have no relish for sweet corn in January or strawberries in November.”
Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds
 
 
 
 
“Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered march. It fortified her to reflect upon the great operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behind them, she felt a sense of personal security.”
Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
 
 
 
 
“The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”
Abraham Lincoln, “Notes for a Law Lecture”
 
 
 
 

“The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
Carl Jung, “Schiller’s Ideas on the Type Problem,” in Collected Work of C. G Jung
 
 
 
 

“He who can achieve great things is not necessarily capable of small.”
Marcel Proust
 
 
 
 

Quotes January 19, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Hurry, hurry, open every door! says my heart.”
Mary Oliver, “Habits, Differences, and the Light That Abides,” Long Life: Essays and Other Writings
 
 
 
 
“And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.”
John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs
 
 
 
 
“Happiness is a place between too much and too little.”
Finnish proverb
 
 
 
 
“Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.”
Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness
 
 
 
 
“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage
 
 
 
 
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy, “Three Methods Of Reform,” Pamphlets: Translated from the Russian
 
 
 
 
“I would like to become tolerant without overlooking anything, persecute no one even when all people persecute me; become better without noticing it; become sadder, but enjoy living; become more serene, be happy in others; belong to no one, grow in everyone; love the best, comfort the worst; not even hate myself anymore.”
Elias Canetti, The Human Province
 
 
 
 
“Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.”
Gertrude Stein, Paris France
 
 
 
 
“Don’t cut what you can untie.”
Joubert“
 
 
 
 
“It isn’t enough to love; we must prove it.”
St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul
 
 
 
 
“It is all a question of weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable surprises.”
M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
 
 
 
 
“We finger the world around us with our senses, which deliver it to us in an idiosyncratic formulation. Our bodies serve to introduce the world to us.”
Anne Truitt, Turn: The Journal of an Artist
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 

Quotes January 01, 2020

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 

“I get so much comfort in thinking of our long friendship, and how it has grown so much stronger through the years, binding us all together. If I didn’t have those things at the bottom of my heart I wouldn’t get much out of blue seas or sunny lands.”
Willa Cather, Letters
 
 
 
 
“You can never predict what little things in the way somebody looks or talks or acts will set off peculiar emotional reactions in other people.”
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to Be and Back Again)
 
 
 
 
“I can recall in my childhood the continuous excitement of long days in which nothing happened; and an indescribable sense of fullness in large and empty rooms. And with whatever I retain of childishness…I still feel a very strong and positive pleasure in being stranded in queer quiet places, in neglected corners where nothing happens and anything may happen; in unfashionable hotels, in empty waiting-rooms, or in watering-places out of the season. It seems as if we needed such places, and sufficient solitude in them, to let certain nameless suggestions soak into us and make a richer soil of the unconscious.”
G. K. Chesterton, “On the Thrills of Boredom”
 
 
 
 
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way…To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion,–all in one.”
John Ruskin, Modern Painters
 
 
 
 
“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
 
 
 
 
“I think that it is useless to fight directly against natural weaknesses…in the ordinary course of life one has to know these weaknesses, prudently take them into account, and strive to turn them to good purpose; for they are all capable of being put to some good purpose.”
Simone Weil, Waiting For God
 
 
 
 
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
Willa Cather, My Ántonia
 
 
 
 
“Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad habits.”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

Quotes December 22, 2019

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin

 
 
“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
 
 
 
 
“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—”
Emily Dickinson
 
 
 
 
“For me, the challenge of middle age was not to stand still.”
Jon Katz, A Dog Year
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“My laboratory is a place where the lights are always on. My laboratory has no windows, but it needs none. It is self-contained. It is its own world. My lab is both private and familiar, populated by a small number of people who know one another well. My lab is the place where I put my brain out on my fingers and I do things. My lab is a place where I move. I stand, walk, sit, fetch, carry, climb, and crawl. My lab is a place where it’s just as well that I can’t sleep, because there are so many things to do in the world besides that. My lab is a place where it matters if I get hurt. There are warnings and rules designed to protect me. I wear gloves, glasses, and closed-toed shoes to shield myself against disastrous mistakes. In my lab, whatever I need is greatly outbalanced by what I have. The drawers are packed full with items that might come in handy. Every object in my lab—no matter how small or misshapen—exists for a reason, even if its purpose has not yet been found.

“My lab is a place where my guilt over what I haven’t done is supplanted by all of the things that I am getting done. My uncalled parents, unpaid credit cards, unwashed dishes, and unshaved legs pale in comparison to the noble breakthrough under pursuit. My lab is a place where I can be the child that I still am. It is the place where I can play with my best friend.”
Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
 
 
 
 
“At such moments I don’t think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: ‘Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you’re not part of it.’ My advice is: ‘Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.’

“I don’t think Mother’s advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You’d be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who’s happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”
Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, March 6, 1944
 
 
 
 
“Complete inactivity in the end has the same effect as prolonged overwork, in the mental sphere as much as in the life of the body and the muscles.”
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
 
 
 
 
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
Seneca
 
 
 
 
“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
 
 
 
 
“The [hay] rack stood as if it had been there forever across the landscape and lit by the sun with its long shadow behind it, and in harmony with every fold of the field and finally turned into a mere form, a primordial form, even if that was not the word I used then, and it gave me huge pleasure just to look at it. I can still feel the same thing today when I see a hayrack in a photograph from a book, but all that is a thing of the past now…so the feeling of pleasure slips into the feeling that time has passed, that it is very long ago, and the sudden feeling of being old.”
Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses

Quotes December 10, 2019

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin

 
 
“One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.”
Goethe
 
 
 
 
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
 
 
 
 
“The only cure [for envy] in the case of ordinary men and women is happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness.”
Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
 
 
 
 
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.”
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way
 
 
 
 
“There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men….
“Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be too quick to change it for another.”
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
 
 
 
 
“But if a man has commonly a very clear and happy daily life then I think we are justified in asking that he shall not make mountains out of molehills. I do not deny that molehills can sometimes be important. Small annoyances have this evil about them, that they can be more abrupt because they are more invisible; they cast no shadow before, they have no atmosphere….But when all this is allowed for, I repeat that we may ask a happy man…to put up with pure inconveniences, and even make them part of his happiness. Of positive pain or positive poverty I do not here speak. I speak of those innumerable accidental limitations that are always falling across our path – bad weather, confinement to this or that house or room, failure of appointments or arrangements…”
G.K. Chesterton, “The Advantages of Having One Leg.”
 
 
 
 
“At such moments I don’t think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: ‘Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you’re not part of it.’ My advice is: ‘Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.’
“I don’t think Mother’s advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You’d be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who’s happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”
Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, March 6, 1944