Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin
“Most of us are experts at solving other people’s problems, but we generally solve them in terms of our own and the advice we give is seldom for other people but for ourselves.”
Nan Fairbrother, The House in the Country
“[There are] three possible ways to find meaning in life—even up to the last moment, the last breath…1) a deed we do, a work we create; 2) an experience, a human encounter, a love; and 3) when confronted with an unchangeable fate (such as an incurable disease), a change of attitude toward that fate.”
Victor Frankl, Recollections
“A house in which there are no people—but with all the signs of tenancy—can be a most tranquil good place. People take up space in a house out of proportion to their size.”
Muriel Spark, The Portobello Road
“Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.”
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
“Even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work.”
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
“Traveling makes one modest: one sees what a tiny place one occupies in the world.”
The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857
