Kept close

Quotes I Love.

My books collect the wisdom of history’s greats. This page is more personal — lines from all over that make me smile, kept where I can find them. It grows slowly.

“You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.”
— Fred Rogers

For parents — and everyone who loves a kid

I love quotes, as you may know, and these make me smile as a parent. Maybe they’ll make you smile too — whether you’re a parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, teacher, or friend to a child somewhere. Aren’t we all, in one way or another?

“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”
— C.S. Lewis
“The days are long but the years are short.”
— Gretchen Rubin
“What makes a good parent? Being present. Noticing. Caring about what your child cares about.”
— John Gottman
“The greatest thing we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.”
— Fred Rogers
“When you know better, you do better.”
— Maya Angelou
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
— Viktor Frankl

My quote cards

A wall of quote cards from my old site: 44 lines I keep coming back to. Many of them live in my quote books too.

Read all 44 as text
  1. “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” — Abraham Lincoln
  2. “I believe the purpose of life is to be happy.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  3. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
  4. “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” — Thoreau
  5. “We need to make all work feel like pro bono work.” — Aaron Hurst More in my interview with Aaron Hurst
  6. “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  7. “Silence is sometimes the best answer.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  8. “Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time.” — Margaret Bonnano
  9. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  10. “Just be a nice warm person. That’s enough.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  11. “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  12. “Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  13. “An investment in knowledge pays the best dividends.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  14. “He that can have patience can have what he will.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  15. “Many people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  16. “Be a nice person. Be a good person.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  17. “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” — Dalai Lama
  18. “Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  19. “Well done is better than well said.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  20. “Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I have always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.” — Abraham Lincoln In my Lincoln quotes
  21. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C.S. Lewis
  22. “Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs
  23. “Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.” — Dalai Lama
  24. “What I’ve really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership.” — Bob Iger
  25. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand… and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.” — Thoreau
  26. “It takes a long time to become young.” — Picasso
  27. “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” — Einstein
  28. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” — Henry Ford
  29. “If it’s not fun, why do it?” — Ben & Jerry
  30. “A good mind, a good heart, warm feelings. These are the most important things.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  31. “The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.” — Thoreau
  32. “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” — Emerson
  33. “My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.” — Francine Jay
  34. “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.” — Bruce Lee
  35. “The height of cultivation runs to simplicity.” — Bruce Lee
  36. “We’re here to make a dent in the universe.” — Steve Jobs
  37. “You may delay, but time will not.” — Ben Franklin In my Ben Franklin quotes
  38. “Spend some time alone every day.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  39. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” — Stephen King More in my Stephen King reading quest
  40. “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” — Dalai Lama In my Dalai Lama quotes
  41. “I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.” — Winston Churchill
  42. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson The card says Thoreau, but the line is Emerson’s, from Self-Reliance.
  43. “A man is what he thinks about all day long.” — Emerson
  44. “Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson The card says Thoreau, but the line is Emerson’s, from Self-Reliance.

Five more, in every color, from my old site’s Happyist page.

Words that make life bigger.

Every Saturday morning I send one short essay on optimism, purpose, and enough — often built around a line like these. Free, three minutes, no noise.

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