Quotes from Gretchen Rubin

By doing a little bit each day you can get a lot accomplished

Just taking one drifting step can you set you in a course that's very hard to stop.

One of the great joys of falling in love is the feeling that the MOST extraordinary person in the entire world has chosen YOU

One of my most helpful Secrets of Adulthood is "What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.

For most people, whenever possible, important habits should be scheduled for the morning. Mornings tend to unfold in a predictable way, and as the day goes on, more complications arise—

The main purpose of laughter is to bind people together; it's a social sound that's meant to be heard by others, to create engagement. We're far more likely to laugh when we're with other people, and when we're with friends rather than with strangers.

For instance, in The Artist's Way, her influential book about cultivating creativity, Julia Cameron suggests scheduling an "artist's date

If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.

I've learned to put great store in my own observations of everyday life, because while laboratory experiments are one way to study human nature, they aren't the only way.

There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need do only inner work Ã¢â'¬Â¦ that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself.… The fact is, a person is so formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings. —CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, The Timeless Way of Building

When I think of myself in the third person, many things become clearer.

It's a Secret of Adulthood: Make sure the things we do to make ourselves feel better don't make us feel worse.

I was comforted by the words of my model Benjamin Franklin, who reflected of his own chart: On the whole, though I never arrived at 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 that I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it.

Associate with people who are likely to improve you. —SENECA, Letters from a Stoic

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Rebels can do anything they want to do

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

See something once—really see it—and it never looks the same again.

I had everything I could possibly want—yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had.

If I had to describe myself using only one word it would be doesn't follow directions.

I agree with writer Gertrude Stein: "Anything one does every day is important and imposing." I love repetition. Doing the same thing over and over makes me feel grounded in my life and makes my actions feel more meaningful.

The harder the push, the greater the Rebel push-back. I laughed when a Rebel friend told me, 'No one can tell me to do anything. I recently got an email saying Please read in the subject line, and I immediately deleted it.

The conduct of our lives is the true reflection of our thoughts. —Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Education of Children

It's always reading that makes me want to experience things.)