On my GoodReads list, I have A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen as a book I wanted to read. This week I read it. It is, indeed, a short book - only 50 pages with a good percentage of them full-page black-and-white photos.
Despite its short length, there was a lot of good information in it. Some highlights include:
- No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.
- John Lennon said,, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
- You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life...your soul.
- I am a good mother to three good children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
- Turn off your cell phone. Turn off your regular phone, for that matter. Keep still. Be present.
- Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you.
- Get a life in which you are generous.
- Life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.
- All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
- It is easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes.
- It is so easy to exist instead of live.
- It's ironic that we forget so often how wonderful life really is. We have more time than ever before to remember it. The men and women of generations past had to work long, long hours to support lots and lots of children in tiny, tiny houses. The women worked in factories and sweatshops and then at home, too, with two bosses, the one who paid them, and the one they were married to, who didn't.
- Those of us who are second and third and fourth generation (immigrants) are surrounded by nice cars, family rooms, patios, pools - the things our grandparents thought only rich people had. Yet somehow, instead of rejoicing, we've found the glass half empty. Our jobs take too much out of us and don't pay enough....Let's be honest. We have an embarrassment of riches. Life is good.
- I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that this is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
- Think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
- School never ends. The classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end.
2 comments:
I also loved this book. It may be short but it is a very satisfying read.
I know her name sounded familiar. As an English Writing major I read Write For Your Life. I don't remember a lot about it now as that was about 25 years ago. She has some practical, universal type quotes in this book from your sampling. Can't go wrong quotes. :) :)
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