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| Favorite Trivia – Joie de Vivre (Joy of Living)
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| “My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”
Meg Ryan (Patricia) – “Joe Versus the Volcano” (1990) |
| “I find ecstasy in living. The mere sense of living is joy enough.”
Emily Dickinson in a letter to a friend |
| “. . . What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine: The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach: Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass . . .” Andrew Marvell – Thoughts in a Garden |
| “Yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery, but today is a gift, that is why it is called the present.”
Anonymous |
| “little man (in a hurry full of an important worry) halt stop forget relax” No Thanks (10) – e. e. cummings |
| “This by far the nicest day of this season neither too hot nor too cold—it blooms on the apex of perfection—an Edenday.” [July 12, 1885]
The Diary of Thomas Alva Edison |
| “In a very cheerful mood. Pleased with myself and everybody til a seagull soared overhead in Kensington Gardens and aroused my vast capacities for envy—I wish I could fly.” [May 10, 1914]
The Journal of a Disappointed Man – W. N. P. Barbellion |
| “My wife’s grandfather lived to the ripe old age of eighty-eight. . . He was a sprightly, imperturbable optimist who loved good food, fine wine, and lively company. He was what the Dutch call a levensgenieter, someone with a talent for enjoying life to its fullest, a real connoisseur of living. Even during his final days, his appetite for life never diminished. One of the last things he said was, ‘I think it stinks that I’m dying.'”
Geary – The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism |
| “Learn from the past, live in the now and be optimistic about the future.”
Anonymous |
| “The art of living is knowing to be ready at any time for an unseen attack.”
David Baird – A Thousand Paths to Enlightenment |
| “Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be, And think each day that dawns the last you’ll see; For so the hour that greets you unforeseen Will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.” Horace, Epistles 1, 4, 12, trans. Conington |
| “Gather the tears, gather the mirth! Neither will last, neither will last! Old Year’s death is Young Year’s birth— Life travels fast!” from Rhyme After Rain – John Galsworthy |
| “This time, like all times is a good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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“The hours, the days, the months, and years, all slide away, nor can the past ever more return, or what is to follow be foreknown. We ought all to be content with the time and portion assigned us. No man expects of any one actor in the theater that he should perform all the parts of the piece himself: one role only is committed to him, and whatever that be, if he acts it well, he is applauded. In the same way, it is not the part of a wise man to desire to be busy in these scenes to the last plaudit. A short term may be long enough to live it well and honorably.” [De Senectute., I, 19.] Cicero |
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“Talk about the joys of the unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected, of finding everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be.” Elizabeth Bibesco, Balloons (Christopher Morley’s Book of Days for 1931 [July 10]) |
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“Don’t let today slip by, for tomorrow you’ll wonder why.” Patty Martino Alspaugh |
| “I won’t miss anything but you and the girls. I never liked cities or my work or anything except you three. I won’t miss a thing except perhaps the change in weather and a glass of ice water when it’s hot, and I might miss sleeping.”
“The Last Night of the World” – Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man |
| “TAKE FROM LIFE ALL WHICH SHE GIVES YOU, WHATEVER IT MAY BE, PROVIDED IT IS INTERESTING AND CAN GIVE YOU SOME PLEASURE.”
Diego Rivera in a letter to Frida Kahlo [January, 1939] |
| “Isn’t pleasure All the more keen in our lives the less we’re inclined to repeat it?” The Eleventh Satire: With an invitation to dinner (The Satires of Juvenal – trans. by Rolfe Humphries) |
| “When asked what had been the happiest time of his life, [Edward] Albee responded, ‘Now. Always.’ He explained, ‘That’s the only way to avoid regret, isn’t it? If one loses one’s talent, if one’s ill and poor and lonely, if something that hideous were to happen to me, I would hope that I would still find something interesting about the experience.'”
Henry Alford– How To Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People |
| “I watch TikTok not to be numbed but to remember what I like about being alive, the elements of which we’re now largely deprived: unexpected spectacles, spontaneous conviviality between strangers, accidental hilarity. Social distancing reduces opportunities for interaction, not just with other people but with environments, objects, and animals, which in turn decreases the odds of being ambushed by delight—a delight doubled by virtue of its unpredictability.”
Just Watching – Charlotte Shane (Book Forum, Dec/Jan/Feb 2021) |
| “True epicures recognize the difference between what you need and what you want, jettison the nonessentials, remember that to be is not to buy.”
Geary – The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism |
| “Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray |
| “The worst day for me is the day after a a holiday. Mama’s sorry for me because she says I’m never going to be happy in life as long as I keep wanting to enjoy everything; life is made up of suffering. But I’m not going to be so foolish as to make such a wonderful life into a life of suffering.” [May 4, 1893]
The Diary of “Helena Morley” – Alice Dayrell Caldeira Brant |
| “All the animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.”
Anonymous |
| “I’m sure everyone, at one time or another, has walked down a street they have walked down a thousand times and suddenly noticed something that they seem never to have noticed before. It may be the light, their frame of mind, or any of an endless number of influences that suddenly renders something visible or memorable. We do tend to rush through the ‘spaces of our lives’ without noticing or taking pleasure (or offense). What a shame.”
Norton Juster – The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth |
| “. . . I felt such a sudden burst of love and happiness and joy in love seething all day in me that I could not help but want to share some of it with you. There is so much to flow over merrily with, and I feel violets sprouting between my fingers and forsythia twining in my hair and violins and bells sounding where I walk.” [March 17, 1953]
Sylvia Plath – Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963, ed. by Aurelia Schober Plath |
| “Happy he, on the weary sea Who hath fled the tempest and won the haven. Happy whoso hath risen, free, Above his striving. For strangely graven Is the orb of life, that one and another In gold and power may outpass his brother, And men in their millions float and flow And seethe with a million hopes as leaven; And they win their Will, or they miss their Will, And the hopes are dead or are pined for still; But whoe’er can know, As the long days go, That To Live is happy, hath found his Heaven!” Euripides – The Bacchae, trans. by Gilbert Murray |
| “We can begin to practice moment-to-moment Awareness by learning to do one thing at a time. When you are drinking tea, drink tea. When you are reading the paper, read the paper. This helps to slow the mind and stop time-bound patterns. When we attend, with care, to our present activity, we discover a wonderful freedom from thought. In the next sip of tea, the next breath, the next stop, no time exists, and with each opportunity you take to come fully into the moment, you’ll feel the relief of resting in the eternal present. “This doesn’t mean that you won’t wear a watch, or follow a schedule, or make plans for tomorrow, but rather that you will be fully attentive to each activity you carry out. With practice, this can steady your mind and decrease anxiety.”
Ram Dass – Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying |
| Clitandre: Dear Marquess, how contented you appear; All things delight you, nothing mars your cheer. Can you, in perfect honesty, declare That you’ve a right to be so debonair? Acaste:By Jove, when I survey myself, I find No cause whatever for distress of mind. I’m young and rich; I can in modesty Lay claim to an exalted pedigree; And owing to my name and my condition I shall not want for honors and position. Then as to courage, that most precious trait, I seem to have it, as was proved of late Upon the field of honor, where my bearing, They say, was very cool and rather daring. I’ve wit, of course; and taste in such perfection That I can judge without the least reflection, And at the theater, which is my delight, Can make or break a play on opening night, And lead the crowd in hisses or bravos, And generally be known as one who knows. I’m clever, handsome, gracefully polite; My waist is small, my teeth are strong and white; As for my dress, the world’s astonished eyes Assure me that I bear away the prize. I find myself in favor everywhere, Honored by men, and worshipped by the fair; And since these things are so, it seems to me I’m justified in my complacency.” The Misanthrope – Molière (trans. by Richard Wilbur) |
