The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

As Mark Twain observed, “An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.”

“Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”

Depressed people have as many nice experiences as other people—they just don’t recall them as well.

I'm sorry, but you can't possibly know that. Many people have many good reasons to be depressed.

As Andy Warhol observed, “Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.”

Then I remembered a Secret of Adulthood (courtesy of Voltaire): “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”