Small Pleasures Quotes

“Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane--in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath--she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“All I want is to be assimilated into a collective, human community where someone braids my hair with flowers and white curtains sway in a warm breeze; where every morning I wake up and drink a glass of chilled iced tea, drive a car across a continent, kick the dirt, fill my nostrils with the air of the desert and move in with someone, get married, bake cookies, push a stroller, learn to play an instrument, dance a waltz.”
― Olga Ravn, The Employees

“Anyone looking back at the log later, trying to piece together a mystery, would find nothing but times and dry entries. It was a lazy Sunday. What made it meaningful were not the facts or details, but the imperceptibles. Inner life. The smell of the beach grass and the feel of sand on a bathroom floor when changing out of a swimsuit. The heat of American summer. Line ten of the log read simply: 10:22 Condor ate second breakfast. It couldn’t capture the perfect toasting of the onion bagel or the saltiness of the fish in contrast with the thickness of cream cheese. It was time lost in a book—a journey of imagination, transportation—which to others simply looks like sitting or lying stomach-down on the rug in front of a summertime fire, legs bent at the knees, up ninety degrees, kicking absently, feet languid in the air.”
― Noah Hawley, Before the Fall

“The most evocative life memories, which produced a synesthesia of emotions, consist of a host of small pleasures intertwined with the homespun stitches of love, affection, kindness, humility, and appreciation of nature.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A lifetime of memories does not provide empirical proof of the value of living. No one memory has a quantifiable value to anyone expect the holder of the memory. Parenting in large part consists of creating positive memories for children. An accumulation of a lifetime of memories does create a musical score that we can assess from an artistic if not scientific perspective. Each happy memory generates a beat of minor joy that when strung together form the musical notes demarking a person’s prosodic inner tune.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Life is suffering," I repeat. My voice seems to have shrunk. I stare at her and ask, "Always?" I sound like a child.
Merriem shakes her head. She reaches over and takes my hand. "Not always."
I swallow. I can barely whisper, "When is it not?"
Merriem gives a small sigh. "Oh, darling. Just when it's not. When it's a good day in between the hard ones." She squeezes my fingertips. "When the sun shines and the bees make honey. When you're with people who love you. When you find treasures- like morels and fiddleheads and huckleberries.”
― Hannah Tunnicliffe, Season of Salt and Honey

“To turn 40 is to realize that one’s limitations will last one’s whole life through, but also to know that all the time, whether one likes it or not, and whether one is aware of it or not, new layers are being added to one’s character, a type of knowledge and insight that isn’t directed towards the future, towards what will come to pass or one day be accomplished, but towards the here and now, in the things you do every day, in what you think about them and what you understand of them.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn

“Small pleasures and little vices combine to make life happy.”
― B.S. Murthy, Crossing the Mirage - Passing through Youth