Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
“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 truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.”
La Rochefoucauld
“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.”
Julian Barnes, The Only Story
“Let us decide on the route that we wish to take to pass our life, and attempt to sow that route with flowers.”
Madame du Chatelet
“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
“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the dominance of outward conditions.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“I love a broad margin to my life.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good…Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.”
C.S. Lewis
