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Hygge Quotes

Browse 126 quotes about Hygge.

Hygge Quotes

“In paying attention to our wellbeing, we address the needs of our environment - the society that we live in and our planet. Sustainability depends on community - when we learn to be happily reliant on each other, we're less likely to turn to material consumption to meet our emotional needs.”

“Hygge is a quality of presence and an experience of togetherness. It is a feeling of being warm, safe, comforted and sheltered. Hygge is an experience of selfhood and communion with people and places that anchors and affirms us, gives us courage and consolation. To hygge is to invite intimacy and connection. It's a feeling of engagement and relatedness, of belonging to the moment and to each other. Hygge is a sense of abundance and contentment. Hygge is about being not having.”

“Because interiority focuses on the inside-outside aspect of hygge, it introduces the important theme of contrast. When we hygger there is a sense of distance between us and the outside world, a contrast between the feeling that we are at the still axis of a moment of pleasure and our awareness of ever-moving life around us. Our experience of contrast is heightened by spatial, temporal and social conditions - inside versus outside, shelter versus exposure, warm versus cold, day versus night, light versus shadow, stillness versus activity, indulgence versus restraint, relaxation versus work, independence versus society, equality versus hierarchy, peace versus conflict.”

“Hyggelige as the Danes may be, there is one serious drawback to being crazy about candles: the soot. Studies show that lighting just one candle fills the air with more microparticles than traffic in a busy street. A study undertaken by the Danish Building Research Institute showed that candles shed more particles indoors than either cigarettes or cooking. Despite Denmark being a highly regulated country, we have yet to see warning labels on candles. Nobody messes with the hygge fanatics.”

“Getting outside in winter is essential. The belief that we can't enjoy ourselves outdoors is largely responsible for the idea that winter is limiting; this perspective makes the world feel out of reach. But this view is erroneous and self-fulfilling. If we remain cooped up, we will feel winter's limitations, and our mood will drop, no matter how hygge we make it inside.”

“What a splendid piece of furniture an armchair is, of utmost importance and usefulness to a contemplative man. During those long winter evenings, it is often sweet and always advisable to stretch out luxuriously in one, far from the din of crowds. A good fire, a few books, some quills - what excellent antidotes to boredom!”

“There, in the warmth of the sun, the protection of the woods, and with the lake as my constant companion, I was free to be my true self. In this place, grades and appearances were not measured, and love was not conditional. I was unshackled from the expectations of others, my spirit as light as the breeze off the lake. I became the golden girl reborn.”

“When we reached The Point, we would first feel the slimy, rough rock below our bellies, as if being lifted on the back of a whale. We would pull ourselves along the rock’s massive underwater surface, careful to not graze our hands or knees, then climb up above the water, standing tall beside the tower of rocks. We spent the rest of our time sliding down its slippery backside, over and over again—our own natural playground.”

“Late afternoons were for resting in the hammock that hung between the Three Sisters, my favourite trio of birch trees, a book resting on my chest. Other days, I would follow my imagination around our property, my bare feet sinking into pillows of soft moss and rough lichens as I climbed up rock faces or followed a path of fallen pine needles. I would name each plant and tree around me as I filled my pockets with acorns, my soles hardened by the end of the summer.”

“To a great extent, friluftsliv is made possible by the Swedish common law of allemansratten (the right of public access), which grants anybody the right to walk, ride a bike or horse, ski, pick berries, or camp anywhere on private land, except for the part that immediately surrounds a private dwelling. In short, that means you can pick mushrooms and flowers, as well as light a campfire and pitch a tent, in somebody else's woods, but not right in front of their house... allemansratten relies on an honor system that can simply be summed up with the phrase "Do not disturb, do not destroy," and trusts that people will use their common sense.”

“In its aspect of comfort, hygge involves a sense of wellbeing which encourages relaxation and peacefulness. It excludes by definition a distracted or preoccupied state of mind: hygge is commitment par excellence to the present moment in its basics. In the words of Hartmann-Petersen, 'Hygge rushes in of itself as soon as one is carefree.' -Judith Friedman Hansen”