Quotes About Balance

The lie-in—by which I mean lying in bed awake—is not a selfish indulgence but an essential tool for any student of the art of living, which is what the idler really is. Lying in bed doing nothing is noble and right, pleasurable and productive.

Better to have lots of time than lots of money in those early years. There will be time later for earning.

I should hate to be employed and have no time for my needlework and my painting and playing the piano and seeing people. I find I have little enough spare time as it is. Rubbish, caro, one can find time for important things if one makes an effort. conversation between Georgie and Lucia

a man who perfectly exemplified the old saying that all work and no play makes Jack a management consultant)

Life is about eating and drinking and sleeping and breathing and working, and not being more unhappy than you absolutely have to.

Paul reached out his hand to help Sophie to her feet; she ignored him (she didn't hold with patronising gender-stereotypical conventions) and wobbled for a moment before her legs remembered how to cope with her weight.

fairness and gender rarely intersected.

It doesn't matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you're not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren't connected, aren't working together harmoniously, well, you're just hopping through life on one leg. You may think you're walking, you may think you're running a damn marathon, but you're only on a hop trip. The connections gotta be maintained.

You're better equipped for this world than I am, she said. I'm always trying to change the world. You know how to live in it.

There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.

People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)

Don't confuse symmetry with balance.

I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees.

Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.

To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.

The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.

How we shape our understanding of others' lives is determined by what we find memorable in them, and that in turn is determined not by any potentially accurate overview of another's personality but rather by the tension and balance that exist in our daily relationships.

To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

If you want your tree to produce plenty o' fruit, you've got to cut it back from time to time. Same thing with your neural cells. Some people might call it brain damage. I call it prunin'.

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.

Why, Tanuki grumbled, would they fell trees but leave men standing? Trees are a damn sight more useful than people, and everything in the world knows that but people.

If I have been given any gift in this life, it's my ability to live simultaneously in the rational world and the world of imagination.

Love is very powerful, but it has limits and it's a costly mistake to spread it too thin.