Tag: Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

A house has a physical definition; a home has a spiritual one.”
Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book)
 
 
“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”
Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
 
 
“Every man’s spice-box seasons his own food.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
 
 
“He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.”
John Burroughs, “The Snow-Walkers,” In the Catskills
 
 
“We read books to find out who we are.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night
 
 
“Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.”
Wislawa Szymborska, “Love at First Sight”
 
 
“In Paris a scrap of garden is more ravishing than a whole park in the country.”
Marcel Proust, Time Regained
 
 
“As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent.”
Octavia Butler, “Furor Scribendi,” Bloodchild and Other Stories
 
 
“One’s life begins on so many occasions, constructing itself out of accident derived from coincidence compounded by character.”
Donald Hall, Unpacking the Boxes
 
 
“Nothing is so simultaneously familiar and alien as that which has been present all along.”
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
 
 
Happy people make me happy, but I can’t make someone be happy, and no one else can make me happy.
By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.
Gretchen Rubin
 
 

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.”
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
 
 
 
 
“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”
Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” The Palm at the End of the Mind
 
 
 
 
“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves.”
Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
 
 
 
 
“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”
 
 
 
 
“There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (
 
 
 
 
“We can only know others by ourselves.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays
 
 
 
 
“Color exists in itself, has its own beauty.”
Henri Matisse, “The Path of Color”
 
 
 
 
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy, “Three Methods Of Reform,” Pamphlets: Translated from the Russian

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
Your good deeds matter! “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
William Shakespeare
 
 
 
 
What if we start cutting each other more slack? “(T)he nature of speech is first draft, and tired or preoccupied people don’t always communicate effectively. So be willing to at least ask if that’s what they meant to say.”
Light Watkins
 
 
 
 
“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to seeing them that we call them ordinary things.”
Hans Christian Anderson
 
 
 
 
“To make a difference in someone’s life you don’t have to be brilliant, rich, beautiful, or perfect. You just have to care.”
Mandy Hale
 
 
 
 
What do YOU need — just for you — today?

Give yourself the luxury of your own attention.

Find out what you need. And, make a plan to care for yourself.
 
 
 
 
We are in the middle of a plague that has killed over 4 million people worldwide. How can you not be kind?
 
 
 
 
Butterflies? Inside? What a mess! — OR — How magical! You choose. But choose well. We are now caught between what’s called a mess but can be magical. What will you choose? Kindness always wins.
 
 
 
 
The world is older and more beautiful than we can understand. And YOU are a vital part of the magic. Be magical. Your joyous magic will make an enormous difference in this time of chaos and uncertainly.
 
 
 
 
There is so much in this world that you’ve never seen, never experienced. You must be HERE to experience them. Be kind to yourself and your world. Stay alive. Be kind.
 
 
 
 
The path is clear. The destination is unclear. You can make your future kind.
 
 
 
 
There is sooo much going on right now. Surround yourself with what brings you joy! Let the joy seep into your soul.
 
 
 
 
Close your eyes. Turn your nose to the wind. And, breathe.

Let the wind blow through you, around you, within you.

Be kind.
 
 
 
 
In this time of deep grief and desperate loss, make sure to tell everyone that you love them. I love you. Pass it on.
 
 
 
 
Kindness is… beauty in the dark, silence in the noise, peace in the middle of rage, and love in action. Be kind to you. Be kind to everyone. You need your own kindness — but so do they.
 
 
 
 
No matter what life throws at you today, you’ve totally got this!
 
 
 
 
Our world is a little like an old barn right now. At one point, it was new, shiny, and did everything we needed it to do. After all of the lockdowns and illness, our barn is weathered. Maybe it’s time to take it down. Maybe it’s time to paint it and carry on. Only you know what to do. Whatever you decide, make sure to be kind.
 
 
 
 
If you see someone wearing a mask, be kind. They may be wearing it for your protection.
 
 
 
 
I don’t know why people feed pigeons. It seems to bring this man so much joy — and, I imagine, it brings the pigeons quite a bit of joy. So I drop my judgments and work on being kind. This is the work of kindness.
 
 
 
 
We have reached another moment of retreat, “lockdown”, “safe at home” or whatever it is called where you are. Staying safe is no reason to stop shining. Shine ever the brighter in place.

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
Soren Kierkegaard, letter, 1847 (italics in the original)
 
 
 
 
“People often ask themselves the right questions. Where they fail is in answering the questions they ask themselves.”
William Maxwell, Time Will Darken It
 
 
 
 
“Looser types—people who are not busy weighing and measuring every little thing—are used to accidents, coincidences, chance, things getting out of hand, things sneaking up on them. They are the happy children of life, to whom life happens for better or worse.”
Laurie Colwin, “A Mythological Subject,” The Lone Pilgrim
 
 
 
 
“Beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see.”
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
 
 
 
 
“The way in which people miss their opportunities is melancholy.”
Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer
 
 
 
 
“One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.”
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
 
 
 
 
“Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. …Your duty, your reward—your destiny—are here and now.”
Dag Hammarskjold, Markings

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, ‘This end is more important than the other.’”
John Cage, Silence
 
 
 
 
“How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them!”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
 
 
 
 
“The world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.”
Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
 
 
 
 
“Early in his career, artist Alberto Giacometti moved into a Paris studio that measured only about sixteen feet square… ‘The longer I stayed,’ he said, ‘the larger it grew.’”
James Lord, Giacometti: A Biography
 
 
 
 
“I am glad to the brink of fear.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
 
 
 
 
“Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.”
Bernard Malamud, “A Conversation with Bernard Malamud,” in First Person Singular: Writers on Their Craft
 
 
 
 
“We lived our lives as if life was forever. To live one’s life without a sense of time is to squander it.”
Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey
 
 
 
 
“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)
 
 
 
 
When it comes to habits, make it easy to do right and hard to go wrong.
It’s easier to demand a lot from yourself when you’re giving a lot to yourself.
Gretchen Rubin

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing.”
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy
 
 
 
 
“Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.”
Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (
 
 
 
 
“Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect than when they have been too perfectly crafted.”
François de La Rochefoucauld, Collected Maxims and Other Reflections
 
 
 
 
“What a lark! What a plunge!”
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
 
 
 
 
“That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself XXIV”
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“What is far off may be more familiar to us than what is quite near.”
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“Our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental thing for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing.”
Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
 
 
 
 
“This is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
 
 
 
 
“A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.”
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
 
 
 
 
“You know that book; you forget the title after you’ve returned it and over the years you try to look it up a few times, but you never find it again.”
Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird
 
 
 
 
“There is in the soul a taste for the good, just as there is in the body an appetite for enjoyment.”
Joseph Joubert, Pensées
 
 
 
 
“In 1970 I felt so lonely that I could not give; now I feel so joyful that giving seems easy. I hope that the day will come when the memory of my present joy will give me the strength to keep giving even when loneliness gnaws at my heart.”
Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary
 
 
 
 
“Her green mind made the world around her green.”
Wallace Stevens, “Description Without Place”
 
 
 
 
“I thought there was great honor in doing journalism that was in direct service to people.”
Ron Lieber
 
 
 
 
“I have a strong sense of self—what I want to do, what I don’t want to do.”
Carla Hall
 
 
 
 
“I take a lot of pride in my routines.”
Ramit Sethi
 
 
 
 
“When you’re little they don’t want to hear from you, but when you’re a lawyer they want you to question everything.”
Jordan Harbinger
 
 
 
 
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
 
 
 
 
“The mind…is rarely so disturbed, but that the company of a friend will restore it to some degree of tranquility and sedateness.”
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
 
 
 
 
Fail small, not big.
Gretchen Rubin

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings
 
 
 
 
“The best way out is always through.”
Robert Frost, “A Servant to Servants”
 
 
 
 
“The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star.”
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, or Meditation on Transcendent Gastronomy
 
 
 
 
“A house has a physical definition; a home has a spiritual one.”
Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden
 
 
 
 
“I love a broad margin to my life.”
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“If you loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father’s face, for behind your father’s face as it is today are all those other faces that were his.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
 
 
 
 
“If you know what somebody wants, you know what he is like.”
W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays
 
 
 
 
“One’s life begins on so many occasions, constructing itself out of accident derived from coincidence compounded by character.”
Donald Hall, Unpacking the Boxes
 
 
 
 
“I believe in the miracles of art, but what
prodigy will keep you safe beside me…”
Jane Kenyon, “Afternoon at MacDowell”
 
 
 
 
“Nobody really looks at anything; it’s too hard.”
Andy Warhol, “Warhol Interviews Bourdon”
 
 
 
 
“But real flowers can never be dispensed with. If they could, human life would be a different affair altogether.”
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
 
 
 
 
“Strangers have a reality for me on the bus that they cannot have on the freeway, simply because we’ve agreed to be in an enclosed space in which we are subject to each other’s actions.”
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
 
 
 
 
“As a parent, at some point, you have to switch from being an advisor to cheerleader.” (If you want to hear me talk about this advice, you can listen to this short episode of A Little Happier.)
 
 
“Alas, there are no wizards.” My father reminded me that it can be tempting to believe that if I could just find the right helper, the right adviser, the right person to do a job, all my problems would magically be solved, and I wouldn’t have to be worried or involved with a project any more. But while there are smart and capable people, if something’s important to me, I have to stay involved. I can’t just delegate to some wizard.
 
 
“Enjoy the process.” My father always emphasizes that if we can enjoy the process, we’re less concerned about outcomes, and we’re less disappointed if our efforts end in failure or frustration. That’s a big help in the world.
 
 
“All you have to do is put on your running shoes and let the front door shut behind you.” Back in high school, when I was first trying to get myself in the habit of daily exercise, he gave me this advice. It’s an excellent mantra for all couch potatoes trying to pick up an exercise habit. Just put on your shoes and step outside!
 
 
“If you’re willing to take the blame when you deserve it, people will give you the responsibility.”
Gretchen Rubin
 
 
 
 

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“Touch has its ecstasies.”
Helen Keller, The World I Live In
 
 
 
 
“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.”
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
 
 
 
 
“I know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential is still deeply embedded in mystery. It is not answerable to any of our formulas.”
Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
 
 
 
 
“What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become strengths greater than what we had when we were ‘normal’ or unbroken…when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks.”
Nnedi Okorafor, Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected
 
 
 
 
“Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.”
Paul Klee
 
 
 
 
“If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it.”
Heraclitus, Fragments
 
 
 
 
“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!
 
 
 
 
“Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.”
W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays
 
 
 
 
“The best way out is always through.”
Robert Frost, “A Servant to Servants”
 
 
 
 
“By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.”
“The days are long, but the summer is short.”
Gretchen Rubin
 
 
 
 

Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness

 
 
“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.”
Samuel Johnson, Selected Writings
 
 
 
 
“Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and me only.”
W. H. Auden, “Reading,” The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays
 
 
 
 
“In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “On Love”
 
 
 
 
“His mother saw that he was not lonesome, and because she was an understanding mother, even though she was a cow, she let him just sit there and be happy.”
Munro Leaf, The Story of Ferdinand
 
 
 
 
“Even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work.”
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
 
 
 
 
“As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent.”
Octavia Butler, “Furor Scribendi,” Bloodchild and Other Stories
 
 
 
 
“If someone asked me what my idea of luxury is, I think my answer would be: flowers in the house all year round.”
Mary Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep
 
 
 
 
“The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.”
Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
 
 
 
 
“I have reached the stage now where luxury is not in fine possessions but in carefree possessions, and the greatest luxury of all would be the completely expendable.”
Nan Fairbrother, The House in the Country
 
 
 
 
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
 
 
 
 
“I love a broad margin to my life.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
 
 
 
 
“’It’s not easy to start over in a new place,’ he said. ‘Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.’”
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying
 
 
 
 
“The hallmark of a decision in line with one’s character is ease and contentment, and an ample, even provision of natural energy.”
“I would be a fool to sacrifice joy to fun.”
Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist
 
 
 
 
“Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather. Circumstances have not allowed me to make a good summer for myself this year…My summer has been overcast by my own heaviness of spirit. I have not had any adventures, and adventures are what make a summer.”
Robertson Davies, “Three Worlds, Three Summers,” The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies
 
 
 
 
“The farm was a form: not like a set of rules on a wall, but like the symmetry of winter and summer, or like the balance of day and night over the year, June against December.”
Donald Hall, String Too Short to Be Saved
 
 
 
 
“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
 
 
 
 
“One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging out with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things.”
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing