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
