Quotes from Gretchen Rubin

Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.

Now, the term 'friend' is a little loose. People mock the 'friending' on social media, and say, 'Gosh, no one could have 300 friends!' Well, there are all kinds of friends. Those kinds of 'friends,' and work friends, and childhood friends, and dear friends, and neighborhood friends, and we-walk-our-dogs-at-the-same-time friends, etc.

I have a terrible memory of my own past. I can barely remember my childhood. I have few memories from college and law school - though once I got married, I got the advantage of being able to consult my husband's memory.

[S]tudies show that one of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success, such as tackling a long-delayed chore.

Nothing,' wrote Tolstoy, 'can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.

One of my key realizations about happiness, and a point oddly under-emphasized by positive psychologists, given its emphasis in popular culture, is that outer order contributes to inner calm. More than it should.

Although we often assume that feelings inspire actions, in fact, actions also inspire feelings. By pushing myself to act happier, I make myself feel happier.

We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, we're free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower.

Getting paperwork under control makes me feel more in control of my life generally.

For quotes, I have one document for general quotes; the other for happiness-related quotes, which I use for the 'Moment of Happiness,' my daily emails of happiness quotes.

If you're impatient while waiting for the bus, tell yourself you're doing 'Bus waiting meditation.' If you're standing in a slow line at the drugstore, you're doing 'Waiting in line meditation.' Just saying these words makes me feel very spiritual and high-minded and wise.

They say that people teach what they need to learn. By adopting the role of happiness teacher, if only for myself, I was trying to find the method to conquer my particular faults and limitations.

I really work on paying attention to the clues my self is giving myself. For instance, I think of myself in the third person. That allows me to manage myself better.

One of the most important elements of my identity is my identity as a reader. I love to read - really, if I'm honest with myself, it's practically the only activity that I truly love to do.

I love taxonomies, categories, ways of dividing people into groups.

I am living my real life, this is it. Now is now, and if I waited to be happier, waited to have fun, waited to do the things that I know I ought to do, I might never get the chance.

I can build a happy life only on the foundation of my own nature.

I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasnt going to change unless I made it change.

I think self-knowledge is a key to happiness.We can build happy lives only on the foundation of our own natures, our own values, and our own interests.

Sometimes I think it's easier to think about being happier, for what ever that means to you then worrying about what is happiness and what would life be if I finally achieved this ultimate happiness?

People feel happier when they feel like they're progressing. When they feel like something in their life is growing or getting better.

Having a messy coat closet should not be a big deal in a full life, and yet there's something about getting control of that coat closet that's surprisingly satisfying.

In 'Happier at Home,' I write a lot about my struggle to create an unhurried atmosphere at home.

One thing that makes me very happy is to have a complicated idea and to feel that I've expressed myself clearly. I remember writing the ending to 'Happier at Home.' I wrote the entire book to build to that ending 'now is now,' and what I had to say was very abstract, and yet I felt satisfied that I managed to say what I wanted to say.