Quote

Subtly, in the little ways, joy has been leaking out of our lives. The small pleasures of the ordinary day seem almost contemptible, and glance off us lightly...Perhaps it's a good time to reconsider pleasure at its roots. Changing out of wet shoes and socks, for instance. Bathrobes. Yawning and stretching. Real tomatoes.

Barbara Holland

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Barbara Holland
Age: 77 †
Born: 1933
Born: April 5
Died: 2010
Died: September 7
Author
Essayist
Writer
Seems
Perhaps
Glances
Subtly
Littles
Seem
Wet
Contemptible
Little
Joy
Pleasures
Socks
Real
Ways
Instance
Tomatoes
Way
Small
Changing
Sock
Good
Almost
Shoes
Glance
Reconsider
Time
Pleasure
Roots
Lightly
Leaking
Lives
Ordinary
Stretching
Yawning

More quotes by Barbara Holland

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Life, after we'd had a few millennia to observe it, turned out to be dreadfully unfair, so we invented sports.
Barbara Holland
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No doubt about it, solitude is improved by being voluntary.
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Single life should be experimental in nature and open to accidents. Some accidents are happy ones.
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A catless writer is almost inconceivable.
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In the taverns all was amiable and easy, but the coffeehouses were cauldrons of edgy malcontents.
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Sometimes, with luck, we find the kind of true friend, male or female, that appears only two or three times in a lucky lifetime, one that will winter us and summer us, grieve, rejoice, and travel with us.
Barbara Holland
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There is no 'cat language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one!
Barbara Holland
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Sophistication called for a variety of talents and attitudes, but the minimum requirement was being in New York. Not all New Yorkers achieved it, but nobody elsewhere had a prayer.
Barbara Holland
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Napping is too luxurious, too sybaritic, too unproductive, and it's free pleasures for which we don't pay make us anxious. Besides, it seems to be a natural inclination. ... Fighting off natural inclinations is a major Puritan virtue, and nothing that feels that good can be respectable.
Barbara Holland
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Dogwoods are great optimists. Daffodils wait and see, crouching firmly underground just in case spring doesn't come this year, but dogwoods have faith.
Barbara Holland
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The trouble with American History is that you don't remember it, and why should you? Nobody does.
Barbara Holland
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Visiting is a pleasure being visited is usually a mixed or ambivalent joy. ... The visitor can always go home the visitee is already home, trapped like a rat in a drainpipe.
Barbara Holland
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Almost any dog thinks almost any human is the Great Spirit, the Primal Creator, and the Universal Force Behind the Sun and Tides. What human can resist?
Barbara Holland
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By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog.
Barbara Holland
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moral indignation is a pleasure, often the only pleasure, in many lives. It's also one of the few pleasures people feel obliged to force on other people.
Barbara Holland
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The larger the ego, the less the need for other egos around. The more modest, humble, and self-effacing we feel, the more we suffer from solitude, feeling ourselves inadequate company.
Barbara Holland
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I was getting sick and tired of being lectured by dear friends with their little bottles of water and their regular visits to the gym. All of a sudden, we've got this voluntary prohibition that has to do with health and fitness. I'm not really in favor of health and fitness.
Barbara Holland
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The only people who still read poetry are poets, and they mostly read their own.
Barbara Holland
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One's own flowers and some of one's own vegetables make acceptable, free, self-congratulatory gifts when visiting friends, though giving zucchini - or leaving it on the doorstep, ringing the bell, and running - is a social faux pas.
Barbara Holland
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In a proper pub everyone there is potentially, if not a lifelong friend, at least someone to lure into an argument about foreign policy or the Red Sox.
Barbara Holland