routines Quotes

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

“It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.”

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.”

“These were her rituals, the routines that made her feel alive and connected. Without them, where would she be? Lost.”

“Every morning, no matter how late he had been up, my father rose at 5:30, went to his study, wrote for a couple of hours, made us all breakfast, read the paper with my mother, and then went back to work for the rest of the morning. Many years passed before I realized that he did this by choice, for a living, and that he was not unemployed or mentally ill.”

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”

“The more you get set into your own world, the smaller your world becomes.”

“Is it wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection? It’s not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles. ”

“A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else.”

“Rising, street-car, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, street-car, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”

“If I saw someone across the street who did the things to me that I routinely do to me, I’d run in the opposite direction. But I can’t, can I?”

“He would play chess with the elephant (who though an though before make a move), run races with the tortoise (who never ever lost), sit quietly with the penguin (who was very shy), lend a handkerchief to the rhinoceros (who always had a runny nose), and, at sunset, read stories to the owl (who was afraid of the dark). ”

“Poil de Carotte doesn’t like overnight guests. They upset his routine; they take his bed and oblige him to sleep with his mother. And though in the daytime he has every fault, his main fault at night is snoring. Of course he snores on purpose.”

“Rosa is disgusted: her aunt has decided to send her to a doggie daycare center. There she faces an unknown routine -- and all kinds of rules. But Rosa soon makes great friends and even finds adventure in the great outdoors. ”

“At five Rosa’s aunt comes to pick her up. The ladies tell her about the little fish and the black water and how Rosa fell in. Then Rosa tells the store her way. She barks and barks about how scared she was how cold the water was. But that then the fishermen pulled her up by the ears. And then she got two little fish and they were so yummy! Now she is happy. But she will never go in the water again.”

From the strength of her own grief and her desperation over how quickly people fall back into their everyday routines as soon as they have overcome their first panic, Janna-Berta develops an enormous will to resist “normalcy”.

“Nations could make war, tidal waves could sweep the world- but Dusty counted these things as none of his business. What really shocked him was to have to postpone his washing day.”

The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break out of the weariness of school-life for one day at least.

“But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can’t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. ”