May 17th, 2013
“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.”
-William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
May 16th, 2013
“We can only know others by ourselves.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
May 15th, 2013
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
May 14th, 2013
“To see things in their true proportion, to escape the magnifying influence of a morbid imagination, should be one of the chief aims of life.”
-The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky
May 13th, 2013
“How often things occur by mere chance which we dared not even hope for.”
-Terence
May 10th, 2013
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 9th, 2013
“The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.”
-Muriel Spark, Loitering With Intent
May 8th, 2013
“Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself, than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.”
-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
May 7th, 2013
“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
May 6th, 2013
“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.”
-Oscar Wilde
May 3rd, 2013
“The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt.”
-G.K. Chesterton
May 2nd, 2013
“I think that it is useless to fight directly against natural weaknesses. One has to force oneself to act as though one did not have them in circumstances where a duty makes it imperative; and in the ordinary course of life one has to know these weaknesses, prudently take them into account, and strive to turn them to good purpose; for they are all capable of being put to some good purpose.”
-Simone Weil, Waiting For God
May 1st, 2013
“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
April 30th, 2013
“Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it’s different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.”
-Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
April 29th, 2013
“Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.”
-Samuel Johnson
April 26th, 2013
“The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”
-William Morris
April 25th, 2013
“Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.”
-Gertrude Stein
April 24th, 2013
“We are interested in others, when they are interested in us.”
-Publius Syrus
April 23rd, 2013
“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”
-Marcus Aurelius
April 22nd, 2013
“Safe! safe! safe!’ the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry ‘Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
-Virginia Woolf
April 19th, 2013
“Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.”
-Robert Southey
April 18th, 2013
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
-William Morris
April 17th, 2013
“My mind works in idleness. To do nothing is often my most profitable way.”
-Virginia Woolf
April 16th, 2013
“There is almost one time that is important— Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”
-Leo Tolstoy
April 15th, 2013
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.”
-James Baldwin, Paris Review Interviews II
April 12th, 2013
“Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.”
-Thomas Merton
April 11th, 2013
“I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate—or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my ‘ten minutes’. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.”
-Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms
April 10th, 2013
“The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.”
-William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
April 9th, 2013
“He who chases two hares will catch neither.”
-Publius Syrus
April 8th, 2013
“Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature—not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant….As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother’s toy garden.”
-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
April 5th, 2013
“On the whole, tho’ I never arrived at the Perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet as I was, by the Endeavor, a better and a happier Man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”
-Benjamin Franklin
April 4th, 2013
“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”
-George Moore
April 3rd, 2013
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”
-William Butler Yeats
April 2nd, 2013
“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
April 1st, 2013
“The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.”
-Samuel Johnson
March 28th, 2013
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
-William Blake
March 27th, 2013
“I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organise and concentrate—or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my ‘ten minutes’. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.”
-Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms
March 26th, 2013
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.”
-Samuel Johnson
March 25th, 2013
“We are interested in others, when they are interested in us.”
-Publius Syrus
March 22nd, 2013
“Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.”
-Goethe
March 21st, 2013
“There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
-Francis Bacon
March 20th, 2013
“To create a little flower is the labour of ages.”
-William Blake
March 19th, 2013
“It is folly for him to rule over others who cannot govern himself.”
-Publius Syrus
March 18th, 2o13
“We can only know others by ourselves.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
March 14th, 2013
“I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.”
-Henry David Thoreau
March 13th, 2013
“Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions, and labours follow each other in swift and distinct successions, seems the most long…”
-Lecky, The Map of Life
March 12th, 2013
“One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.”
-Goethe
March 11th, 2013
“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 Meanin
March 8th, 2013
“Now run along and play, but don’t get into trouble. George promised to be good. But it is easy for little monkeys to forget.”
-H.A. Rey, Curious George
March 7th, 2013
“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
March 6th, 2013
“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”
-Iris Murdoch
March 5th, 2013
“The cut worm forgives the plow.”
-William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
March 4th, 2013
“In 1970 I felt so lonely that I could not give; now I feel so joyful that giving seems easy. I hope that the day will come when the memory of my present joy will give me the strength to keep giving even when loneliness gnaws at my heart.”
-Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary
March 1st, 2013
“Choose which seems best and, in the doing, it will become agreeable and easy.”
-Pythagoras
February 28th, 2013
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
-Leo Tolstoy
February 27th, 2013
“If better were within, better would come out.”
-Simon Patrick
February 26th, 2013
“He was like a man owning a piece of ground in which, unknown to himself, a treasure lay buried. You would not call such a man rich, neither would I call happy the man who is so without realizing it.”
-Eugène Delacroix
February 25th, 2013
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
-Bertrand Russell
February 22nd, 2013
“We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack.”
-Schopenhauer
February 21st, 2013
“Children think not of what is past, nor what is to come, but enjoy the present time, which few of us do.”
-Jean de La Bruyère
February 20th, 2013
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
-Willa Cather
February 19th, 2013
“Pleasures that are in themselves innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main object of pursuit.”
-The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky
February 18th, 2013
“Begin by instructing yourself, then you will receive instruction from others.”
-Goethe
February 15th, 2013
“Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life.”
-The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky
February 14th, 2013
“To be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.”
-Rousseau, The Social Contract
February 13th, 2013
“Silence was the cure, if only temporarily, silence and geography. But of what was I being cured? I do not know, have never known. I only know the cure. Silence, and no connections except to landscape.”
-Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I Was Young
February 12th, 2013
“Optimism is true moral courage.”
-Ernest Shackleton
February 11th, 2013
“The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
-Joseph Addison
February 8th, 2013
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
-Epicurus
February 7th, 2013
“How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you’ll soon discover what you’re like.”
-Goethe
February 6th, 2013
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
-Leo Tolstoy
February 5th, 2013
“All wisdom is not new wisdom.”
-Winston Churchill
February 4th, 2013
“It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
February 1st, 2013
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
January 31st, 2013
“I had wanted to come back to Greenwich Village ever since I had left Waverly Place, and since moving to West Eleventh Street, I have never lived anyplace else. I do not want to. That is not because of what the Village is but because of what I have made it, and what I have made it depends on who I am at the time.”
-Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I Was Young
January 30th, 2013
“He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.”
-Goethe
January 29th, 2013
“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”
-Leo Tolstoy
January 28th, 2013
“He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”
-Samuel Johnson
January 25th, 2013
“Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”
-Carl Jung
January 24th, 2013
“If one thinks that one is happy, that is enough to be happy.”
-Madame de la Fayette
January 23rd, 2013
“No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.”
-John Ruskin
January 22nd, 2013
“There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.”
-Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
January 21st, 2013
“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
January 18th, 2013
“The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.”
-Joseph Addison
January 17th, 2013
“What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”
-Aristotle
January 16th, 2013
“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”
-George Santayana
January 15th, 2013
“That which gives the strongest habitual pleasure, whether it be innate or acquired, will in the great majority of cases ultimately dominate.”
-The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky
January 14th, 2013
“The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.”
-Goethe
January 11th, 2013
“With what pleasure do we look upon a family, through the whole of which reign mutual love and esteem, where the parents and children are companions for one another, without any other difference than what is made by respectful affection on the one side, and kind indulgence on the other.”
-Adam Smith
January 10th, 2013
“Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognize his powers for good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognize that this power is not unlimited.”
-The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky
January 9th, 2013
“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
January 8th, 2013
“The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.”
-Goethe
January 7th, 2013
“Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; from fear of its being abused.”
-Samuel Johnson
January 4th, 2013
“The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.”
-Montaigne
January 3rd, 2013
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
January 2nd, 2013
“They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
-Andy Warhol
January 1st, 2013
“Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for another hour but this hour.”
-Walt Whitman
December 31st, 2012
“If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.”
-Leo Tolstoy
December 28th, 2012
“Pleasures that are in themselves innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main object of pursuit.”
-The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky
December 27th, 2012
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
December 26th, 2012
“Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.”
-Confucious
December 25th, 2012
“Exuberance is beauty.”
-William Blake
December 24th, 2012
“Things do not change; we change.”
-Henry David Thoreau
December 21st, 2012
“When they had eventually calmed down a bit, and had gotten home, Mr. Duncan put the magic pebble in an iron safe. Some day they might want to use it, but really, for now, what more could they wish for? They all had all that they wanted.”
-William Steig, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
December 20th, 2012
“…the man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of works.”
-Adam Smith
December 19th, 2012
“There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things.”
-Wallace Stevens, Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self
December 18th, 2012
“The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
-Carl Jung
December 17th, 2012
“Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, going to bed again. There are a few more.
There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person’s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen. Look at your own life and you will find the same. It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me.
Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can’t.”
-Christopher Alexander
December 14th, 2012
“A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
-Eudora Welty
December 13th, 2012
“Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most often wrecked.”
-The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky
December 12th, 2012
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
-Seneca
December 11th, 2012
“The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.”
-Samuel Butler
December 10th, 2012
“Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad habits.”
-Benjamin Franklin
December 7th, 2012
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
December 6th, 2012
“Enough is abundance to the wise.”
-Euripides
December 5th, 2012
“Happiness is a place between too much and too little.”
-Finnish proverb
December 4th, 2012
“It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
December 3rd, 2012
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”
-Bertrand Russell
November 29th, 2012
“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”
-Buddha
November 28th, 2012
“Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.”
-William James
November 27th, 2012
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
-Marcus Aurelius
November 26th, 2012
“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its own focus.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
November 23rd, 2012
“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the dominance of the outward conditions.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
November 22nd, 2012
“To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.”
-Samuel Johnson
November 21st, 2012
“One lives in the naive notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past.”
-Elias Canetti
November 20th, 2012
“One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.”
-Simone Weil
November 19th, 2012
“The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.”
-Logan Pearsall Smith
November 16th, 2012
“Where Thou art-that-is Home.”
-Emily Dickinson
November 15th, 2012
“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
November 14th, 2012
“Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
November 13th, 2012
“It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.”
-Seneca
November 12th, 2012
“My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been before.”
-Diane Arbus
November 9th, 2012
“The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”
-William Morris
November 8th, 2012
“Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.”
-Gertrude Stein
November 7th, 2012
“What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.”
-Samuel Johnson
November 6th, 2012
“Read the best books first, otherwise you’ll find you do not have time.”
-Henry David Thoreau
November 5th, 2012
“Read at whim! Read at whim!”
-Randall Jarrell
November 2nd, 2012
“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”
-Marcus Aurelius
November 1st, 2012
“Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
October 31st, 2012
“’Safe! safe! safe!’ the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry ‘Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.’”
-Virginia Woolf
October 30th, 2012
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
-Voltaire
October 29th, 2012
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
-William Morris
October 26th, 2012
“My mind work in idleness. To do nothing is often my most profitable way.”
-Virginia Woolf
October 25th, 2012
“Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.”
-Thomas Merton
October 24th, 2012
“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”
-George Moore
October 23rd, 2012
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”
-William Butler Yeats
October 22nd, 2012
“The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.”
-Samuel Johnson
October 19th, 2012
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
-Leo Tolstoy
October 18th, 2012
“A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.”
-Proverbs 19:11
October 17th, 2012
“For the love of God and my sisters (so charitable towards me) I take care to appear happy and especially to be so.”
-St. Therese of Lisieux
October 16th, 2012
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends…”
-Samuel Johnson
October 15th, 2012
“It is much easier to extinguish a first desire than to satisfy all of those that follow it.”
-La Rochefoucauld
October 12th, 2012
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends…”
-Samuel Johnson
October 11th, 2012
“Purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about it.”
-Flannery O’Connor
October 10th, 2012
“The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.”
-Samuel Butler
October 9th, 2012
“We prefer to see those to whom we do good than those who do good to us.”
-La Rochefoucauld
October 8th, 2012
“Order is heaven’s first law.”
-Alexander Pope
October 5th, 2012
“You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.”
-W. Somerset Maugham
October 4th, 2012
“…that best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love.”
-William Wordsworth
October 3rd, 2012
“But I don’t think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.”
-Virginia Woolf
October 2nd, 2012
“Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.”
-Samuel Johnson
October 1st, 2012
“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”
-Walt Whitman
September 28th, 2012
“Ah! There is nothing like staying home for real comfort.”
-Jane Austen
September 27th, 2012
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”
-Henry David Thoreau
September 26th, 2012
“Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.”
-Bertrand Russell
September 25th, 2012
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
-William Shakespeare
September 24th, 2012
“Our life is the creation of our mind.”
-Buddha
September 20th, 2012
“Choose what is best, and habit will make it pleasant and easy.”
-Plutarch
September 19th, 2012
“You can observe a lot by watching.”
-Yogi Berra
September 18th, 2012
“For surely to be wise is the most desirable thing in all the world.”
-Cicero
September 17th, 2012
“Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.”
-Michel de Montaigne
September 14th, 2012
“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”
-Bertrand Russell
September 13th, 2012
“Everyone thinking of changing the world, buy no one thinks of changing himself.”
-Leo Tolstoy
September 12th, 2012
“Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.”
-Samuel Johnson
September 11th, 2012
“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.”
-Oscar Wilde
September 10th, 2012
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ectasy at your feet.”
-Franz Kafka
September 7th, 2012
“Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.”
-Diane Arbus
September 6th, 2012
“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
September 5th, 2012
“…the true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life…”
-William Morris
September 4th, 2012
“The only cure [for envy] in the case of ordinary men and women is happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness.”
-Bertrand Russell
September 3rd, 2012
“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for.”
-Oscar Wilde
August 31, 2012
“Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation.”
-W.H. Sheldon
August 30th, 2012
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
August 29th, 2012
“Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”
-George Eliot
August 28th, 2012
“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”
-Bertrand Russell
August 27th, 2012
“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
-Ayn Rand
August 24th, 2012
“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.”
-Mary McCarthy
August 23rd, 2012
“To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.”
-Oscar Wilde
August 22nd, 2012
“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
August 21st, 2012
“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.”
-Disraeli
August 20th, 2012
“Man’s life is a progress, not a station.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
August 17th, 2012
“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the dominance of outward conditions.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
August 16th, 2012
“Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation.”
-W.H. Sheldon
August 15th, 2012
“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”
-Guillaume Appollinaire
August 14th, 2012
“The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.”
-Lin Yutang
August 13th, 2012
“This is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
-Willa Cather
August 10th, 2012
“It makes me happy to encounter goodness, love of work, humane intelligence, and people no matter at what kind of job, be it ever so humble, or ever so exalted, who do it well and con amore.”
-Bernard Berenson
August 9th, 2012
“Maybe the reason my memory is so bad is that I always do at least two things at once. It’s easier to forget something you only half-did or quarter did.”
-Andy Warhol
August 8th, 2012
“Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.”
-Bertrand Russell
August 7th, 2012
“It isn’t enough to love; we must prove it.”
-St. Therese of Lisieux
August 6th, 2012
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.”
-Voltaire
August 3rd, 2012
“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor’s of the mind.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
August 2nd, 2012
“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.”
-Mary McCarthy
August 1st, 2012
“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”
-Goethe
July 31st, 2012
“A comfortable home is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.”
-Sydney Smith
July 30th, 2012
“It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.”
-Seneca
July 27th, 2012
“To have management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise…Let [a man] take a course of chemistry, or a course of rope-dance, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself.”
-Samuel Johnson
July 26th, 2012
“I don’t know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don’t identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.”
-Alberto Giacometti
July 25th, 2012
“Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it’s different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.”
-Andy Warhol
July 24, 2012
“Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things.”
-Bertrand Russell
July 23st, 2012
“Energy creates energy. It is by spending myself that I become rich.”
-Sarah Bernhardt
July 20th, 2012
“Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful.”
-Gertrude Stein
July 19th, 2012
“…the true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life…”
-William Morris
July 18th, 2012
“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
July 17th, 2012
“Happiness is a place between too much and too little.”
-Finnish proverb
July 16th, 2012
“To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.”
-Samuel Johnson
July 13th, 2012
“As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I’ve found that to be absolutely axiomatic.”
-Andy Warhol
July 12th, 2012
“Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.”
-Bertrand Russell
July 11th, 2012
“The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
-Carl Jung
July 10th, 2012
“Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears.”
-Marcus Aurelius
July 9th, 2012
“All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.”
-Samuel Johnson
July 6th, 2012
“It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new.”
-Democritus
July 5th, 2012
“I love the broad margin to my life.”
-Henry David Thoreau
July 4th, 2012
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
-Simone Weil
July 3rd, 2012
“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
July 2nd, 2012
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
-Buddha
June 29th, 2012
“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
June 28th, 2012
“When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
June 27th, 2012
“A merry heart doeth good [like] a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
-Proverbs 17:22
June 26th, 2012
“One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.”
-Simone Weil
June 25th, 2012
“Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.”
-Bertrand Russell
June 22nd, 2012
“Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.”
-William James
June 21st, 2012
“It is all a question of weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable suprises.”
-M.F.K. Fisher
June 20th, 2012
“The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.”
-Bertrand Russell
June 19th, 2012
“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
June 18th, 2012
“The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”
-Abraham Lincoln
June 15th, 2012
“Blessed is the man who has found his work. Let him ask no other blessedness.”
-Thomas Carlyle
June 14th, 2012
“The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.”
-Logan Pearsall Smith
June 13th, 2012
“I would like to become tolerant without overlooking anything, persecute no one even when all people persecute me; become better without noticing it; become sadder, but enjoy living; become more serene, be happy in others; belong to no one, grow in everyone; love the best, comfort the worst; not even hate myself anymore.”
-Elias Canetti
June 12, 2012
“If we did not have pride, we would not complain of it in others.”
-La Rochefoucauld
June 11, 2012
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.”
-Voltaire
June 8th, 2012
“Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.”
-Confucious
June 7th, 2012
“Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.”
-Samuel Johnson
June 6th, 2012
“What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.”
-Aristotle
June 5th, 2012
“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
June 4th, 2012
“There is almost one time that is important – Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”
-Leo Tolstoy
June 1st, 2012
“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”
-George Santayana
May 31, 2012
“The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt.”
-G.K. Chesterton
May 30th, 2012
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
May 29th, 2012
“As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.”
-Samuel Johnson
May 28th, 2012
“It is easier to resist at the begining than at the end.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
May 25th, 2012
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
-Bertrand Russell
May 24th, 2012
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
-Leo Tolstoy
May 23nd, 2012
“Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.”
-Samuel Johnson
May 22nd, 2012
“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”
-Marcus Aurelius
May 21st, 2012
“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”
-Iris Murdoch
May 18th, 2012
“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
May 17th, 2012
“As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I’ve found that to be absolutely axiomatic.”
-Andy Warhol
May 16th, 2012
“Choose which seems best and, in the doing, it will become agreeable and easy.”
-Pythagoras
May 15th, 2012
“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
May 14th, 2012
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
-Romans 7: 15-16
May 11th, 2012
“A comfortable home is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.”
-Sydney Smith
May 10th, 2012
“Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 9th, 2012
“It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.”
-Seneca
May 8th, 2012
“Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad habits.”
-Benjamin Franklin
May 7th, 2012
“Home was quite a place when people stayed there.”
-E.B. White
May 4th, 2012
“Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.”
-Samuel Johnson
May 3rd, 2012
“The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.”
-Samuel Butler
May 2nd, 2012
“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”
-Buddha
May 1st, 2012
“It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”
-G.K. Chesterton
April 30th, 2012
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
April 27th, 2012
“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”
-George Moore
April 26th, 2012
“Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”
-Carl Jung
April 25th, 2012
“We needs must love the highest when we see it.”
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
April 24th, 2012
“Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
April 23rd, 2012
“My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been before.”
-Diane Arbus
April 20th, 2012
“If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life.”
— Leo Tolstoy
April 19th, 2012
“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largly freed, from the dominance of outward conditions.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
April 18th, 2012
“The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.”
— Samuel Johnson
April 17th, 2012
“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
April 16th, 2012
“They always say that times changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
— Andy Warhol
April 13th, 2012
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
— Willa Cather
April 12th, 2012
“In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.”
— John Cage
April 11th, 2012
“Optimism is true moral courage.”
— Ernest Shackleton
April 10th, 2012
“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.”
— La Bruyere
April 9th, 2012
“Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:4-5
April 6th, 2012
“If one thinks that one is happy, that is enough to be happy.”
— Madame de la Fayette
April 5th, 2012
“Enough is abundance to the wise.”
— Euripide
April 4th, 2012
“Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.”
— Samuel Johnson
April 3rd, 2012
“All wisdom is not new wisdom.”
— Winston Churchill
April 2nd, 2012
“Exuberance is beauty.”
— William Blake
