Eileen > Eileen's Quotes

“Frugality without creativity is deprivation.”
― Amy Dacyczyn

“The manufacturing of most goods harms the environment in one way or another. The culprit is not the factory, but it is we who buy what it produces. Therefore we should think carefully about items we purchase.”
― Amy Dacyczyn, The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle

“Tightwaddery without creativity is deprivation. When there is a lack of resourcefulness, inventiveness, and innovation, thrift means doing without. When creativity combines with thrift you may be doing it without money, but you are not doing without.”
― Amy Dacyczyn, The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle

“Let's clear one thing up: Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Listening to your heart is not simple. Finding out who you are is not simple. It takes a lot of hard work and courage to get to know who you are and what you want.”
― Sue Bender, Plain and Simple: A Woman's Journey to the Amish

“Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.”
― Regina Brett

“Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.”
― Regina Brett

“No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.”
― Regina Brett

“Success in life is not how well we execute Plan A; it's how smoothly we cope with Plan B.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach

“Celebrate the Sacred in the ordinary.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach

“Never forget that all you have is all you need.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present— love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure— the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach

“The revelation that we have everything we need in life to make us happy but simply lack the conscious awareness to appreciate it can be as refreshing as lemonade on a hot afternoon. Or it can be as startling as cold water being thrown in our face. How many of us go through our days parched and empty, thirsting after happiness, when we’re really standing knee-deep in the river of abundance?”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy

“Your heart will always tell you what’s working and what’s not.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy

“There is no companion so companionable as Solitude,” Thoreau reminds me as I carry a hot cup of tea back to bed.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy

“Trust that through the balm of simplicity your frazzled and weary soul can discover the place where you ought to be. Every day offers us simple gifts when we are willing to search our hearts for the place that’s right for each of us.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy

“A balanced life has a rhythym. But we live in a time, and in a culture, that encourages everyone to just move faster. I'm learning that if I don't take the time to tune in to my own more deliberate pace, I end up moving to someone else's, the speed of events around me setting a tempo that leaves me feeling scattered and out of touch with myself. I know now that I can't write fast; that words, my own thoughts and ideas, come to the surface slowly and in silence. A close relationship with myself requires slowness. Intimacy with my husband and guarded teenage sons requires slowness. A good conversation can't be hurried, it needs time in which to meander its way to revelation and insight. Even cooking dinner with care and attention is slow work. A thoughtful life is not rushed.”
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

“Not a day goes by that I don't still need to remind myself that my life is not just what's handed to me, nor is it my list of obligations, my accomplishments or failures, or what my family is up to, but rather it is what I choose, day in and day out, to make of it all. When I am able simply to be with things as they are, able to accept the day's challenges without judging, reaching, or wishing for something else, I feel as if I am receiving the privilege, coming a step closer to being myself. It's when I get lost in the day's details, or so caught up in worries about what might be, that I miss the beauty of what is.”
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

“...there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them.”
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

“It's easy, given the times we live in and the implicit messages we absorb each day, to equeate a good life with having a lot and doing a lot. So it's also easy to fall into believing that our children, if they are to succeed in life, need to be terrific at everything, and that it's up to us to make sure that they are-to keep them on track through tougher course loads, more activities, more competitive sports, more summer programs. But in all our well-intentioned efforts to do the right thing for our children, we may be failing to provide them with something that is truly essential-the time and space they need to wake up to themselves, to grow acquainted with their own innate gifts, to dream their dreams and discover their true natures.”
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

“I know I can't make time slow down, can't hold our life as it is in a freeze frame or slow my children's inexorable journeys into adulthood and lives of their own. But I can celebrate those journeys by bearing witness to them, by paying attention, and, perhaps most of all, by carrying on with my own growth and becoming. Now it dawns on me that the only way I can figure out what I'm meant to be doing is to try to understand who I'm meant to be...I will not waste this life, not one hour, not one minute. I will not take for granted the blessing of our being here...I will give thanks...”
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

“Meaning and purpose come not from accomplishing great things in the world, but simply from loving those who are right in front of you, doing all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are.”
― Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment

“Perhaps the real point of life is simply to wear us down until we have no choice but to start abandoning our defenses. We learn that the way things are is simply the way they are meant to be right now, and then, suddenly, at long last, we catch a glimpse of the abundance in the moment--abundance even in the face of things falling apart.”
― Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment

“If you want to be reborn,' it is written in the Tao Te Ching, 'let yourself die.' This is what I've been having trouble with, the fact that letting go can feel, at times, like a death. Someday, I know, I will lose everything. All the small deaths along the way are practice runs for the big ones, asking us to learn to be present, to grow in faith, to be grateful for what is. Life is finite and short. But this new task, figuring out how to let go of so much that has been precious -- my children, my youth, my life as I know it -- can feel like a bitter foretaste of other losses yet to come.”
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

“I want to hold on tight to everything and everyone I cherished and, at the same time, saw in a way I never had before that living on this earth, growing older, and growing up in the true sense of the word is really about learning how to let go.”
― Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment

“Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“I'm homesick all the time," she said, still not looking at him "I just don't know where home is. There's this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it's like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“You are who you are, whether you like it or not, so why not like it?”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells