Louisa Thomsen Brits Quotes

When we hygger, we frame the moment, give it our full attention, savour and hold it, in an awareness that the moment will pass.
We feel how one moment becomes layered on to the next; past and present mingled together - everything falling into place, into one accord.

Every repast can have soul and can be enchanting; it asks for only a small degree of mindfulness and a habit of doing things with care and imagination. -Thomas Moore

Hygge offers space for both reverie and relatedness. The heat of an open fire draws us close. Its shadow gives us a place to hide and softens our gaze.

For years, home has been idealised as a refuge from the world, somewhere predictable and unchanging. But home isn't just where we go to escape the world. Home is how we inhabit the world. Meaning comes from connection and a willingness to pay attention to the particulars of our lives, from the things we choose to use to our daily rituals and shared activities.

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.

We still carry within us, in a small warm spot, the idea of home. Home as a safe place, a loving place and a creative place. Place of comfort and privacy. Place where we can explore our inner life. -Isla Crawford

All really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home. -Gaston Bachelard

We don't hygge to be content, we find contentment in hygge. Hygge is... about pleasure, presence and participation.
It's... the understanding that if we are to wholeheartedly participate in life, we are entitled to small islands of calm.

At a time of global instability we have become distanced from each other and the environment.
We have lost the immediacy, comfort and truthfulness of the literal and actual, and need to find alternative ways to consume and connect.
Hygge describes a way of being that introduces humanity and warmth in our homes, schools, workplaces, cities and nations.

True kinship takes a warm heart. In essence, it is about being together, deeply honestly. We talk about love so much but we forget that it is something we give rather than get: a way of being. -Ilse Crawford

Hygge is our awareness of the scale of our existence in contrast to the immensity of life. It is our sense of intimacy and encounter with each other and with the creaturely world around us. It is the presence of nature calling us back to the present moment, calling us home.

Without a home, everything is fragmentation. -John Berger

Life begins well. It begins enclosed, protected, all warm in the bosom of the house. -Gaston Bachelard

...to hold twilight or watch it darken, describes the pleasure we take in pausing to observe as day slips into night.
To stand at our window, wrapped in the half-dark and watch the day disappear... is a moment of hygge.

Less is more. -Robert Browning

In our deeds we can structure our lives so that the simple things that we do everyday, from bathing to cooking, have resonance and ritual. -Ilsa Crawford

Considering family togetherness seems promising for understanding hygge in its most basic form. When we refer to hygge, we are using the concept of home and family to think with. -Jeppe Trolle Linnet

Hygge gives us a framework to support our very human needs, desires and habits. To learn to hygge is to take practical steps to evoke it - to shelter, cluster, enclose, embrace, comfort and warm ourselves and each other. Cultivating the habits of balance, moderation, care and observance will then comfortably entire more hygge in our daily lives.

...how a familiar room slowly changes colour as morning arrives.

We all hygger: gathered around a table for a shared meal or beside a fire on a dark night, when we sit in the corner of our local cafe or wrap ourselves in a blanket at the end of a day on the beach.
Lying spoons, baking in a warm kitchen, bathing by candlelight, being alone in bed with a hot water bottle and a good book - these are all ways to hygge.
Hygge draws meaning from the fabric of ordinary living.
It'a a way of acknowledging the sacred in the secular, of giving something ordinary a special context, spirit and warmth and taking time to make it extraordinary.

Home is an emotional state, a place in the imagination where feelings of security, belonging, placement, family, protection, memory and personal history abide. -Thomas Moore

Although home still represents stability in an unstable world, we're beginning to see that home can be how we live, a situation that we create and recreate.
Home is less attached to bricks and mortar and more about the lives we lead, the ways that we connect with each other, the communities we build.
Home is a state of mind, something we make for ourselves wherever we can.
Hygge is the home we make in the flux and flow of our lives.

Just living isn't enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower." -Hans Christian Anderson

He who knows contentment is rich. -Lao Tzu

At the heart of hygge is a willingness to set aside time for simply being with people, and, ideally, having all the time in the world for them. Hygge is a vehicle for showing that we care. It's a way of paying attention to our children or partners and friends in the messy reality of the here and now, and putting down the distractions that pull us in different directions. So many of us are drawn to a virtual world of connectivity. Hygge isn't about a life without technology, but it asks us to balance our commitments and remember the value of human interaction, conversation and physical intimacy. It liberates us to fully inhabit the moment without feeling compelled to record it.

Hygge happens when we commit to the pleasure of the present moment in its simplicity.
It's there in the things we do that give everyday life value and meaning, that comfort us, make us feel at home, rooted and generous.

Mind, home and country are the interiorities of hygge.

We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love. -Mother Teresa

Material goods rarely alter our levels of happiness, unlike emotional experience. Having can never replace being. -Ilsa Crawford

Hygge relies on us finding a balance between self-containment and wholehearted participation, personal liberty and awareness of the needs of others. It connotes a caring, civilised mode of behaviour that builds companionable ease and trust.