Category: VOCATION

  • “How will I find the right books to give me the answers I want, and even if I ever find them, when will I get time to read them?”

    —St. Augustine

  • If your mood and motivation are low, are telling you not to act, that’s all the more reason to act. Yes, feeling good can lead to action, but action can also lead to feeling good.

    —Brad Stulberg

  • I am in a limbo that needs to be patterned from within. People who have regular jobs can have no idea of just this problem of ordering a day that has no pattern imposed on it from without.

    Journal of a Solitude
    May Sarton

  • There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour—put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me.

    Journal of a Solitude
    May Sarton

  • This morning I woke at four and lay awake for an hour or so in a bad state. It is raining again. I got up finally and went about the daily chores, waiting for the sense of doom to lift—and what did it was watering the house plants. Suddenly joy came back because I was fulfilling a simple need, a living one. Dusting never has this effect (and that may be why I am such a poor housekeeper!), but feeding the cats when they are hungry, giving Punch clean water, makes me suddenly feel calm and happy.

    Journal of a Solitude
    May Sarton

  • I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines.

    Journal of a Solitude
    May Sarton

  • The best way to heal yourself? Heal others.

    Bittersweet
    Susan Cain

  • But he took his belief that life wasn’t worth living and turned it on its head, asking what would make life worthwhile after all—what a single human could do to benefit humanity.

    Bittersweet
    Susan Cain

  • He was self-indulgent, a failure. He had not abandoned failure; it was his address, his street, his one comfort.

    Light Years
    James Salter