Rest Quotes

Feeling drained?

“I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool.”
Carl Jung, via Daily Rituals (Page 41)

7 Things You Should Be Doing Regularly:

“Logically, somebody who never put effort into anything should be the master of effortlessness. But it is not so. If you want to know effortlessness, you need to know effort. When you reach the peak of effort, you become effortless. Only a person who knows what it is to work understands rest. Paradoxically, those who are always resting know no rest; they only sink into dullness and lethargy. This is the way of life.”
Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 105)

25 Replenishing Quotes from The Gift Of A Year on Rest, Recovery, and Self Care

Excerpt: These 25 Quotes from The Gift Of A Year will replenish your soul and put the emphasis of your focus back to where it’s most important—on you.

“Every couple of years a farmer lets his fields go fallow so the soil can replenish itself. Why should we be any different?”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 127)

Mira Kirshenbaum Quote on Retreating Back So That You Can Keep Moving Forward in Life

The French have an expression: Reculer pour mieux sauter. This means that you have to step back, retreat a little, if you’re going to successfully jump over something. Want to jump across a ditch? You don’t just walk to the edge and then leap. You walk to the edge, gauge the distance, and then retreat a bit to give yourself room to get a full running start before you leap. Sometimes we can’t take the next leap forward unless we take the time to step back first. Where will you get the strength to sauter (leap forward) if you can’t allow yourself to reculer (pull back)?”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 87)

Beyond the Quote (258/365)

Keep moving forward is the motto, yes. But, how to move forward if you walked yourself up to a ditch (as is often the case in life)? Moving forward in that case is to fall into the ditch and get stuck (or worse). So, as Kirshenbaum illustrates above, we move backwards so that we can gain the strength and momentum needed to run and jump over the ditch. In other words, sometimes the best way to keep moving forward is to move backwards, first.

“Recreation doesn’t just mean enjoying yourself. It literally means re-creating yourself. It’s almost a way of taking yourself apart and putting yourself back together again so that you feel better and function better. And so that you’ve worked out some of the glitches in your system.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 88)

“Rest doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means lying fallow, and that means restoring the nutrition you’ve lost. It’s about building yourself up. Reculer means retreating so you can advance. And retreating carries with it all the implications of a religious retreat—a way to spend energy to get more energy.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 88)

Franz Kafka Quote on Using Subtle Maneuvers to Stay Balanced and Focused As You Continue To Fight in Life

“Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”
Franz Kafka, via Daily Rituals

Beyond the Quote (154/365)

It never ceases to amaze me how fast 10 minutes goes by when I’m distracted and busy versus how slow 10 minutes goes by when I’m trying to be present. Even just this morning I was reminded. My alarm went off at around 7:15am and after snoozing for another 15 minutes, I went on my phone to further wake up for the day. Before I knew it, it was already 8:10am. 40 minutes had literally flown by before I had even one conscious thought to check the time.

“Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, via Stillness is the Key (Page 230)

“People say, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ as they hasten that very death, both literally and figuratively. They trade their health for a few more working hours. They trade the long-term viability of their business or their career before the urgency of some temporal crisis. If we treat sleep as a luxury, it is the first to go when we get busy. If sleep is what happens only when everything is done, work and others will constantly be impinging on your personal space. You will feel frazzled and put upon, like a machine that people don’t take care of and assume will always function.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 230)

“Good decisions are not made by those who are running on empty. What kind of interior life can you have, what kind of thinking can you do, when you’re utterly and completely overworked? It’s a vicious cycle: We end up having to work more to fix the errors we made when we would have been better off resting, having consciously said no instead of reflexively saying yes. We end up pushing good people away (and losing relationships) because we’re wound so tight and have so little patience.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 225)

Ashleigh Brilliant Quote on the Vital Importance of Rest

“Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.”
Ashleigh Brilliant

Beyond the Quote (115/365)

If you’re at the point of burnout, that doesn’t mean that you’re just physically tired or that you’re mentally fatigued… being burned out means that your body has shut down because all of your domains of energy have been depleted—physical, mental, and emotional. And when your body shuts down, you have no choice but to listen.

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes… Including you.”
Anne Lamott

Beyond the Quote (114/365)

Following through on a commitment is something that you can choose to do or choose not to do. Burning out is something that happens—it’s not something that you can choose against. When there’s no more gas in the car, you can’t choose to magically have more gas with the snap of your fingers—you need a gas station for that. When there’s no more battery juice left in your phone, you can’t choose to boost your battery life with positive thinking—you need a charging cable for that. When there’s no more energy left inside you—mental, physical, or emotional—you can’t demand more energy to appear through even the most disciplined thinking—you need rest, recover, and self-care for that.

Rest Quotes

Do what you have to do.

Pick wisely.

You deserve a rest.