As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Audrey HepburnRead
Some people dream of having a big swimming pool. With me, it’s closets
Interpretation
Hepburn values personal satisfaction and comfort over material wealth.
In this quote, Audrey Hepburn humorously contrasts the common desire for luxurious possessions, such as a big swimming pool, with her own passion for simple, practical comforts like closets. This reflects a deeper message about finding joy in what truly makes us happy, rather than conforming to societal expectations of success and happiness.
In practice
During a speech about gratitude at a community event.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
If I'm honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.
True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.
On the one hand maybe I’ve remained infantile, while on the other I matured quickly, because at a young age I was very aware of suffering and fear.
This is what you do on your very first day in Paris. You get yourself, not a drizzle, but some honest-to-goodness rain, and you find yourself someone really nice and drive her through the Bois de Boulogne in a taxi. The rain's very important. That's when Paris smells its sweetest. It's the damp chestnut trees.
I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.
Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.
If you're in a position where you can help other people, there is nothing better in life than helping other people. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
I have an odd theory on happiness, and it bothers people. My general theory is that happiness is a reward for an animal doing what it should be doing. So if a horse runs, it feels happy. Or if you are too thin, you can't be happy, because evolution wants you to be tense and anxious, trying to wake up in the morning looking for food.
Today, let us swim wildly, joyously in gratitude.
Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.
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