All quotes courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl—
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you…
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.
Wallace Stevens, “Gray Room”
“Choose always the way that seems best, however rough it may be, and custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.”
Pythagoras
“All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.”
William James, The Principles of Psychology
“A man is not only happy but wise also, if he is trying, during his lifetime, to be the sort of man he wants to be found at his death.”
Thomas à Kempis
“It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.”
Seneca
“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)
“In New Mexico he always awoke a young man; not until he rose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older. His first consciousness was a sense of the light dry wind blowing in through the windows, with the fragrance of hot sun and sage-brush and sweet clover; a wind that made one’s body feel light and one’s heart cry ‘To-day, to-day,’ like a child’s.”
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
“It needs good management to enjoy life. I enjoy it twice as much as others, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or less attention that we give to it…The shorter my possession of life the deeper and fuller I must make it.”
Michel de Montaigne
