From for the family's sake, by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

"Is it actually more valuable to push a pen on paper or buttons on a computer than to be expert in human life and its care? Is life more worthwhile because there is never time to pick wild blackberries and make a fruit crumble? Are things really more important than people? Will the warmth and wisdom of the expertise if caring for each other be handed on? Isn't this an amazingly interesting and complex life vocation on the one hand, and yet clear on the other?
I find it so. To me it seems an enormous privilege to be what my children call "Mum.""

Better Than Before

I've been reading Better Than Before; Mastering the habits of our everyday lives, by Gretchen Rubin. This about sums up goal of the book, which is also my goal as I build habits a la Charlotte Mason:

"As I reflected on the changes I'd seen in my habits and in other people's habits, it struck me that only rarely do we achieve a dramatic, picture-perfect before and after. Sometimes we do make a complete transformation; it's not an utter fantasy. But usually we end up in a place that's better than before. And that's enough."

A quote about habits

"There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as to practically not exist for his consciousness at all."
-William James, Psychology: Briefer Course