The Beauty of Dusk Quotes

“People who flourish make a decision to flourish. They point themselves toward joy.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“There was nothing like a martini to blunt the day and polish the night.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“Imagine that our hardships, our hurdles, our demons, our pain were spelled out for everyone around us to see. Imagine that each of us donned a sandwich board that itemized them.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“Defiance or resignation? It seemed to me that both were in order, but the proportions of each had to be right. The mix—the recipe—had to make sense. The same went for hope and dread. I could wade into but not wallow in either.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“If you maintain a robust agenda of activities, if you nurture a rich network of relationships, if you intellectually challenge yourself, if you pay attention to your diet, if you exercise regularly and vigorously, if you latch on to a sense of purpose”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“As our physical muscles grow weaker, our emotional muscles grow stronger, and we’re better at seeing the comedy in the tragedy, the advance in the setback, the good in the bad.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“It required attention, openness, humility. It required the recognition that something small could be enough, that something ordinary could be extraordinary.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“While we have minimal control over the events that befall us, we have the final say over how we regard and react to them.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“Why me?” There’s a better question, of course: “Why not me?” Why should any of us be spared struggle, when struggle is a condition more universal than comfort, than satiation, than peace, maybe than love? Should we even be calling or thinking of it as struggle, which connotes an exertion beyond the usual, a deviation from the norm?”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“topic underscore how much contentment has to do with what we accept, what we expect and what we measure our current”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“The challenge of life, present for most of it but more dominant in the second half, is adjusting to loss or, more specifically, developing the judgment and grace not only to accept its inevitability but also to recognize that it’s not the only trajectory, that there are many ways to meet and measure it and that there are consolations, including all that remains. Cherishing those leftovers—those holdovers—is the key to thriving, and sometimes even to surviving.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“He knew the particular and special solace of traveling down streets, pulling into parks, and slipping into restaurants that compose a living, breathing photo album of your path to the present.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“Sometimes a limit or a loss is, as I mentioned in an earlier chapter, a gateway to experiments that you wouldn’t have sought, skills that you wouldn’t have acquired, insights that you wouldn’t have gleaned. You just have to allow for that prospect and finesse that perspective.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“what determined people’s happiness wasn’t their physical conditions or capabilities but what they paid attention to, what they emphasized, what they accomplished within the possibilities available to them.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“contentment has to do with what we accept, what we expect and what we measure our current situations against.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“Even in the later innings of our lives, we have unplumbed abilities, untaxed muscles, flexibility, growth.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“If you maintain a robust agenda of activities, if you nurture a rich network of relationships, if you intellectually challenge yourself, if you pay attention to your diet, if you exercise regularly and vigorously, if you latch on to a sense of purpose—all of this will probably enhance your cognitive fitness, your mental”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“Of course, some people, confronting hardship, don’t have that agency: The circumstances are so overwhelming or their internal coping mechanisms so compromised that their lots hinge on the interventions or generosity of those around them. But it’s my educated guess that more people have sway over the direction they turn in. And it’s my observation that there’s a crucial period, a discrete phase, when they summon the will to steer toward a sunny horizon or they don’t.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“For all our claims and gestures of dominion over this earth, all our gravity-defying explorations beyond it, all our artistic triumphs, all our athletic feats, we are a breakable species,”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“Why me?” There’s a better question, of course: “Why not me?” Why should any of us be spared struggle, when struggle is a condition more universal than comfort,”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found

“One was the repurposing of trauma or upset as a badge of honor, the turning of the statement “I can’t believe what I’m going through” from a complaint to a boast, from “I can’t believe what I’m being put through” to “I can’t believe what I’m managing to get through.”
― Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found