Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“I should say that happiness is being where one is and not wanting to be anywhere else.”
Michael Frayn, A Landing on the Sun
“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
“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
“I think my mind becomes clearer when I am in the presence of nature. Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can’t seem to express the intensity which beats upon my senses. I haven’t at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature…Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that!”
Paul Cezanne, in Cezanne by Ambroise Vollard
“Before I manage to really wear myself down on a walk, there is often so much to think about. Children, work, unanswered messages. When my strength is reduced, I no longer have the resources to think about much, and that’s when the smells, the sounds and the ground seem to draw much closer to my experience. It’s as if my senses open to their surroundings.”
Erling Kagge, Walking One Step at a Time
“Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.”
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
“Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch
“There is gold paint, but Rembrandt didn’t use it to paint a golden helmet.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Color
[Of the reading she did in her childhood] “I do not regret the trash. It has harmed me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
“My mind works in idleness. To do nothing is often my most profitable way.”
Virginia Woolf, Diary, February 16, 1930
“Yes, I’ve always been a dreamer, and yes, I have always tried. And dreams are special things. But dreams are of no value if they’re not equipped with wings and feet and hands and all that. If you’re going to make a dream come true, you’ve got to work with it. You can’t just sit around. That’s a wish. That’s not a dream.”
Dolly Parton, interview, Bust June/July 2014
Gretchen Rubin: Ideas for How to “Exorcise” 2020.
