Sir J. Stephen

Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered ability. Happy is he who acts as the Columbus to his own soul.

Thomas A Kempis and Eknath Easwaran

Wherever you go, you will always bear yourself about with you, and so you will always find yourself.
 - Thomas A. Kempis

There is only one way to get a real vacation: get as far away from the ego as possible. Worrying about your problems all the time makes for misery with a capital M. For getting away from misery, I recommend this "economy plan": do not feed your ego and your problems, with your attention. They will soon lose weight.
 - Eknath Easwaran

George Bernard Shaw and Eknath Easwaran

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.
  – George Bernard Shaw

All of us have tasted the freedom and happiness that self-forgetfulness brings. In watching a good game of tennis or becoming engrossed in a novel, the satisfaction comes not so much from what we are watching or reading as from the act of absorption itself. For that brief span, our burden of personal thoughts is forgotten. Then we find relief, for what lies beneath that burden is a still, clear state of awareness.

The scientist or the artist absorbed in creative work is happy because she has forgotten herself in what she is doing. But nowhere will you find personalities so joyous, so unabashedly lighthearted, as those who have lost themselves in love for all. That is the joy we glimpse in Saint Francis or Mahatma Gandhi. To look at the lives of men and women like these is to see what joy means.

  – Eknath Easwaran

Philip Levine

It is the imagination that gives us poetry. When you sit down to write a poem, you really don't know where you're going. If you know where you're going, the poem stinks, you probably already wrote it, and you're imitating yourself.

You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn't expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, "That is truly what I felt. That is truly what I saw."

Mark Strand

Now that the vegetarian nightmare is over and we are back to
our diet of meat and deep in the sway of our dark and beauty-
ful habits and able to speak with calm of having survived, let
the breeze of the future touch and retouch our large and hun-
gering bodies. Let us march to market to embrace the butcher
and put the year of the carrot, the month of the onion behind
us, let us worship the roast or the stew that takes its place once
again at the scared center of the dining room table.

 

"A Short Panegyric" by Mark Strand, from Almost Invisible

E. L. Doctorow

Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it's lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it's time to have a drink.

 

--the author on his writing routine

Marcus Jackson

and praise the kettle whistle,
imitating an important train,
delivering us

these steam-brimmed sips of tea.

--from "Winter Thanks" by Marcus Jackson in Neighborhood Register

Lillian Disney

No one's ever gonna pay a dime to see a dwarf picture.

--to her husband, Walt Disney, about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Unknown

On judgement day if God should say, "Did you clean your house today?" I will say, "I did not, I played with my dogs and I forgot."

Noel Coward

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

Martha Beck

Researchers at Northwestern University have found that people who'd just watched a comedy video were better at solving a word puzzle than subjects who'd watched clips from a horror film or a lecture on physics. It seems a part of the brain activated by laughter and lightheartedness is especially well suited to helping us find clever solutions to our problems.

Gabrielle Hamilton

In the university program where I was supposed to be emancipating myself from the kitchen, preparing myself to go back to New York having at least answered the question of my own potential, the novelty and thrill had thoroughly worn off. I could not find the fun or the urgency in the eventless and physically idle academic life. It was so lethargic and impractical and luxurious. I adored reading and writing and having my brain crushed; but those soft ghostly people lounging around in agony over their "texts," endlessly theorizing over experiences they would never have, made me ache to get out of the leather chairs, to put my shoes and socks back on, and get back into the kitchen, which I increasingly found practical and satisfying. The work may not have held much meaning and purpose, but I was gunning the motor of my car to get off campus and get to it each day.

To tackle a prep list at eight a.m. and have it knocked out by four p.m., black Sharpie line crossing out each item on the To-Do list:

• 6 quarts aioli
• brown brisket
• butcher salmon
• toast walnuts

felt so manageable and tactile and useful. I could wake up and tackle that in a way that I would never be able to wake up and take a crack at certain literary pursuits, like for example, illuminating the fog surrounding the human condition. This is not suggest that I accepted this understanding about myself gladly, with just a sneering dismissal of the pursuit in the first place. Human condition. It's a blow to have to admit to yourself that you are not quite cut out for something that matters so much to you. More than a blow--it's a knockout. I had to lie down on the floor of my apartment for a very long time letting that one sink in. Did I have something more to offer, any other talent than a strong work ethic? Did I have something in me other than dishwasher?

As it turns out, I did not.

To stand at the prep table with other cooks who were just doing mundane things like fixing the car over the weekend, cleaning the house, and shuttling kids to doctor's appointments felt newly satisfying and meaningful enough. I liked these people and their lives. But more to the point, I came to understand that I liked People and Life. After sitting around for too long in those leather chairs, I welcomed the intense pressure of getting a dinner for 200 plated quickly, and came to see that there was a rush and a method in that that I hadn't quite known to what extent I liked and needed in my life. And I will admit, spending that chilly hour cleaning out a cluttered walk-in and putting impeccable order to it is still, 30 years later, my favorite part of kitchen life. I bring my mother's compulsion for concrete order with me wherever I go.


--Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef (2011)

Anne Lamott

...the garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe. It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food. It's a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses; it's about winning, about providing society with superior things, and about proving that you have taste and good values and you work hard. And what a wonderful relief every so often to know who the enemy is─because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time. And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth and growth and beauty and danger and triumph─and then everything dies away, right? But you just keep doing it.

-from Bird by Bird, c. 1994

Anne Lamott

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

-from Bird by Bird, c. 1994

Jennifer Michael Hecht

We think our version of a happy life as more like physics than like pop songs; we expect the people of the next century, say, to agree with our basic tenets — for instance, that broccoli is good for a happy life and that opium is bad — but they will not. Our rules for living are more like the history of pop songs. They make their weird sense only to the people of each given time period. They aren't true.

--speaking about her book The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn't Working Today (2007)