Top 250 Gretchen Rubin Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Self-awareness is a key to self-mastery.”

— Gretchen Rubin

2. “What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.”

— Gretchen Rubin

3. “The days are long, but the years are short.”

— Gretchen Rubin

4. “Being taken for granted is an unpleasant but sincere form of praise. Ironically, the more reliable you are and the less you complain, the more likely you are to be taken for granted.”

— Gretchen Rubin

5. “We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period.”

— Gretchen Rubin

6. “One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.”

— Gretchen Rubin

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7. “Act the way you WANT to feel.”

— Gretchen Rubin

8. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

— Gretchen Rubin

9. “Do good, feel good; feel good, do good.”

— Gretchen Rubin

10. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Lower the bar. Actually spending ten minutes clearing off one shelf is better than fantasizing about spending a weekend cleaning out the basement.”

— Gretchen Rubin

11. “Outer order contributes to inner calm.”

— Gretchen Rubin

12. “How about this,” I suggested. “Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, ‘I’ll get back on track tomorrow,’ try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.”

— Gretchen Rubin

13. “We are happy when we are growing.”

— Gretchen Rubin

Featured in: Happiness Quotes

14. “Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant but a bad master.”

— Gretchen Rubin

15. “Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.”

— Gretchen Rubin

16. “Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity.”

— Gretchen Rubin

17. “September is the other January.”

— Gretchen Rubin

18. “Technology is a good servant but a bad master.”

— Gretchen Rubin

19. “Happiness comes not from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.”

— Gretchen Rubin

Featured in: Happiness Quotes

20. “When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.”

— Gretchen Rubin

21. “I enjoy the fun of failure. It’s fun to fail, I kept repeating. It’s part of being ambitious; it’s part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

— Gretchen Rubin

22. “Money. It’s a good servant but a bad master.”

— Gretchen Rubin

23. “Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life. We repeat about 40 percent of our behavior almost daily, so our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.”

— Gretchen Rubin

24. “Turns out that people who try new things, go new places, learn new skills, etc. are happier. This can be tough, because novelty and challenge also bring frustration and irritation – but if you can push through that, novelty and challenge can bring enormous happiness rewards.”

— Gretchen Rubin

25. “Enthusiasm is a form of social courage.”

— Gretchen Rubin

26. “Volunteering to help others is the right thing to do, and it also boosts personal happiness.”

— Gretchen Rubin

27. “Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.”

— Gretchen Rubin

28. “It’s easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”

— Gretchen Rubin

29. “Be a storehouse of happy memories.”

— Gretchen Rubin

30. “Nothing,? wrote Tolstoy, ’can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”

— Gretchen Rubin

31. “Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self.”

— Gretchen Rubin

32. “The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.”

— Gretchen Rubin

33. “The First Splendid Truth: To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.”

— Gretchen Rubin

34. “Happiness: “You Bring Your Own Weather To The Picnic.””

— Gretchen Rubin

35. “There are no do overs and some things just aren’t going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is.”

— Gretchen Rubin

36. “The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted.”

— Gretchen Rubin

37. “Work harder to appreciate your ordinary day.”

— Gretchen Rubin

38. “I needed to change the lens through which I viewed everything familiar.”

— Gretchen Rubin

39. “To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.”

— Gretchen Rubin

40. “Focus not on doing less or doing more but on doing what you value.”

— Gretchen Rubin

41. “Pay close attention to any flame of enthusiasm.”

— Gretchen Rubin

42. “Feelings follow actions. If I’m feeling low, I deliberately act cheery, and I find myself actually feeling happier. If I’m feeling angry at someone, I do something thoughtful for her and my feelings toward her soften. This strategy is uncannily effective.”

— Gretchen Rubin

43. “The things that go wrong often make the best memories.”

— Gretchen Rubin

44. “Keep in mind that to avoid loneliness, many people need both a social circle and an intimate attachment. Having just one of two may still leave you feeling lonely.”

— Gretchen Rubin

45. “Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly. According to a footnote, the argument of the growing heap is: If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so.”

— Gretchen Rubin

46. “Remember that although the distinction can be difficult to draw, loneliness and solitude are different.”

— Gretchen Rubin

47. “The desire to start something at the “right” time is usually just a justification for delay. In almost every case, the best time to start is now.”

— Gretchen Rubin

48. “Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started.”

— Gretchen Rubin

49. “Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability.”

— Gretchen Rubin

50. “Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.”

— Gretchen Rubin