Danish Hygge Quotes

Live life today like there is no coffee tomorrow.

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

Benjamin Franklin said it best: “Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.

Harmony: It's not a competition. We already like you. There is no need to brag about your achievements.

Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about things. It is about being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe, that we are shielded from the world and allow ourselves to let our guard down.

In the summertime, you are allowed to go for a wider range of colors, even something crazily flamboyant like gray.

It doesn’t cost money to light a room correctly—but it does require culture.

So, to all you introverts out there, do not feel embarrassed or boring for being a person who prefers things that are hygge.

5. GRATITUDE Take it in. This might be as good as it gets.

Remember, you can’t make everyone like you. If you pretend to be someone else, you will attract the wrong people. If you choose to be yourself, you’ll attract the right people and they will be your people.

We are social creatures, and the importance of this is clearly seen when one compares the satisfaction people feel in relationships with their overall satisfaction with life. The most important social relationships are close relationships in which you experience things together with others, and experience being understood; where you share thoughts and feelings, and both give and receive support. In one word: hygge.

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. -Simone Weil

You will never be free until you have no need to impress anyone.

Hygge has been called everything from “the art of creating intimacy,” “coziness of the soul,” and “the absence of annoyance,” to “taking pleasure from the presence of soothing things,” “cozy togetherness,” and my personal favorite, “cocoa by candlelight”.

To paraphrase one of the greatest philosophers of our time-Winnie-the-Pooh-when asked how to spell a certain emotion, "You don't spell it, you feel it.

You cannot buy the right atmosphere or a sense of togetherness. You cannot hygge if you are in a hurry or stressed out, and the art of creating intimacy cannot be bought by anything but time, interest and engagement in the people around you.

The closest you will ever come to seeing vampires burnt by daylight is by inviting a group of Danes for a hygge dinner and then placing them under a 5,000K fluorescent light tube. At first, they will squint, trying to examine the torture device you have placed in the ceiling. Then, as dinner begins, observe how they will move uncomfortably around in their chairs, compulsively scratching and trying to suppress twitches.

Gratitude is more than just a simple "thank you" when you receive a gift. It is about keeping in mind that you live right now, allowing yourself to focus on the moment and appreciate the life you lead, to focus on all that you do have, not what you don't. Cliches? Totally.

He who knows contentment is rich. -Lao Tzu

Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves for we shall never cease to be amused. -Proverb

If I cannot ask people directly how happy they are, I ask them how satisfied they are with their social relationships, because that gives me the answer.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. -Annie Dillard

The most common form of despair is not being who you are. -Soren Kierkegaard

Hygge is about giving your responsible, stressed-out achiever adult a break. Relax.

I felt it shelter to speak to you. -Emily Dickinson

Hygge is humble and slow. It is choosing rustic over new, simple over posh and ambience over excitement. In many ways, hygge might be the Danish cousin to slow and simple living.

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

the best predictor of whether we are happy or not is our social relationships.

Inside each of us are memories, fantasies and desires for home - a shelter waiting to be built, a place of peace to be revisited.

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

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. -Irish proverb

Architecture is about the understanding of the world and turning it into a more meaningful and humane place. -Juhani Pallasmaa

Craft makes our homes more human. -Ilsa Crawford

What better way of remembering the ones that we have lost, than by cooking their favorite meal.

We were silent, tired, and happy, and it was pure hygge.

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happens but seldom.

The key to surviving four seasons in one day is layers. You should always bring another cardigan. You can't hygge when you are cold.

Hygge is a phenomenon that reflects our way of inhabiting the world. The routines that shape our days locate us - from the places we visit to the small rituals that give us pause.

Home should be a warm, liveable place that is alive, a place to please the eye and soothe the senses in scale, curves, colour, variety, pattern and texture. -Josef Frank

Adults are not supposed to play. We are supposed to stress, have worries and be too busy dealing with life's problems. But according to a study undertaken by Princeton University and led by Alan Krueger, Professor in Economics and Public Affairs there, we are happiest when we are involved in engaging leisure activities.

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.

...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.

It is wearing your pajamas and watching Lord of the Rings the day before Christmas, it is sitting in your window watching the weather while sipping your favorite tea, and it is looking into the bonfire on summer solstice surrounded by your friends and family while your twistbread slowly bakes.

We were all tired after hiking and were half asleep, sitting in a semicircle around the fireplace in the cabin, wearing big sweaters and woolen socks. The only sounds you could hear were the stew boiling, the sparks from the fireplace, and someone having a sip of mulled wine. Then one of my friends broke the silence. “Could this be any more hygge?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes,” one of the women said after a moment. “If there was a storm raging outside.” We all nodded.

Hygge was never meant to be translated—it was meant to be felt.

real wealth is not what we can accumulate but what we have to share.

Every person I’ve met who has moved to Denmark tells me the same thing. It is close to impossible to penetrate the social circles there.

Almost 60 percent of Danes say the best number of people for hygge is three to four.

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. -William Morris.

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

If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. -Kahlil Gibran

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

The rule of thumb is: the lower the temperature of the light, the more hygge. A camera flash is around 5,500 Kelvin (K), fluorescent tubes are 5,000K, incandescent lamps 3,000K, while sunsets and wood and candle flames are about 1,800K. That is your hygge sweet spot.

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.

How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this. I need someone to pour myself into. -Sylvia Plath

All books are hyggelig, but classics written by authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens have a special place on the bookshelf. At the right age, your kids may also love to cuddle up with you in the hyggekrog and have you read to them. Probably not Tolstoy.

Time spent with others creates an atmosphere that is warm, relaxed, friendly, down-to-earth, close, comfortable, snug, and welcoming. In many ways, it is like a good hug, but without the physical contact. It is in this situation that you can be completely relaxed and yourself. The art of hygge is therefore also the art of expanding your comfort zone to include other people.

Life can pass us by so quickly, and before we know it, it’s gone. All those small moments in between the big moments are just as important and precious. Feelings of connection, presence, simplicity, and joy are what enriches our lives at a deeper level.

Following these discoveries, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis stated that a culture's language both reflects how people experience their world and affects their actions in it. Would we still feel love if we had no word for it? Of course we would. But what would the world be like if we had no word for marriage? Our words and language shape our hopes and dreams for the future - and our dreams for the future shape how we act today.

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.

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.

One of the reasons for the high level of happiness in Denmark is the good work–life balance, which allows people to make time for family and friends.

When you stay in one, there is a closer connection to nature and to each other. A cabin forces you to live more simply and slowly. To get out. To get together. To enjoy the moment.

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

Without a home, everything is fragmentation. -John Berger

Less is more. -Robert Browning

Hygge is about having less, enjoying more; the pleasure of simply being. It is generous and celebratory, a way to remember the importance of the simple act of living itself.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. -Ludwig Wittgenstein

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. -William Morris

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

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

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

We do not remember days, we remember moments. -Cesare Pavese

The grace of a curve is an invitation to remain. We cannot break away from it without hoping to return. -Gaston Bachelard

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet. -Emily Dickinson

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If you pretend to be someone else, you will attract the wrong people. If you choose to be yourself, you’ll attract the right people and they will be your people.

Can you remember who you were before the world told you who to be?” ~ Danielle LaPorte

We are not paying taxes, we are investing in our society. We are purchasing quality of life. The key to understanding the high levels of well-being in Denmark is the welfare model’s ability to reduce risk, uncertainty, and anxiety among its citizens and to prevent extreme unhappiness.

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.

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.

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 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.

In other words, if a city is designed in a way that makes a long drive to work necessary, we harm the social health of that city. If a lot of people cycle, it’s probably an indication that you live in a healthy neighborhood. This is something that should be seriously considered in urban planning if we want to ensure neighborliness and trust among locals.

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.

Nobody takes center stage or dominates the conversation for long stretches of time. Equality is an important element in hygge—a trait that is deeply rooted in the Danish culture—and also manifests itself in the fact that everybody takes part in the chores of the hyggelig evening. It is more hyggeligt if we all help to prepare food, instead of having the host alone in the kitchen.

THE HYGGE MANIFESTO 1. ATMOSPHERE Turn down the lights. 2. PRESENCE Be here now. Turn off the phones. 3. PLEASURE Coffee, chocolate, cookies, cakes, candy. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! 4. EQUALITY “We” over “me.” Share the tasks and the airtime. 5. GRATITUDE Take it in. This might be as good as it gets. 6. HARMONY It’s not a competition. We already like you. There is no need to brag about your achievements. 7. COMFORT Get comfy. Take a break. It’s all about relaxation. 8. TRUCE No drama. Let’s discuss politics another day. 9. TOGETHERNESS Build relationships and narratives. “Do you remember the time we . . . ?” 10. SHELTER This is your tribe. This is a place of peace and security.

When we are content, our daily actions are infused with a quiet satisfaction that we share with those around us. We become aware of and responsible for other people’s well-being and they, in turn, for ours. Hygge captures a way of being with other people, caring for them and ourselves.

Fredagshygge/Søndagshygge [Fredashooga/Sundashooga] Hygge you have on Fridays or Sundays. After a long week, fredagshygge usually means the family curling up on the couch together watching TV. Søndagshygge is about having a slow day with tea, books, music, blankets, and perhaps the occasional walk if things go crazy.

If a city is designed in a way that makes a long drive to work necessary, we harm the social health of that city. If a lot of people cycle, it's probably an indication that you live in a healthy neighborhood. This is something that should be seriously considered in urban planning, if you want to ensure a neighborhood togetherness and trust among locals.

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.

But one of the main reasons why Denmark does so well in international happiness surveys is the welfare state, as it reduces uncertainty, worries and stress in the population. You can say that Denmark is the happiest country in the world or you can say that Denmark is the least unhappy country in the world. The welfare state is really good (not perfect, but good) at reducing extreme unhappiness. Universal and free health care, free university education and relatively generous unemployment benefits go a long way towards reducing unhappiness.

Link purchases with good experiences. I had saved money for a new favorite chair but waited until I had published my first book to get it. That way, the chair reminds me of something that was an important accomplishment for me. We can apply the same thing to that special sweater or that pair of nice woolen socks. Save for them—but wait until you have that really hyggelig experience: you want to be reminded of it when you pull them on.

We agree to spend “Sunday dinner” in hygge. We all promise to help one another as a team in creating a cozy atmosphere where everyone feels safe and no one needs to have their guard up. We agree to try to . . . Turn off the phones and the iPads. Leave our drama at the door. There are other times to focus on our problems. Hygge is about creating a safe place to relax with others and leave the everyday stressors outside. Not complain unnecessarily.

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.

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.

It is often said that what most immediately sets English apart from other languages is the richness of its vocabulary. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary lists 450,000 words, and the revised Oxford English Dictionary has 615,000, but that is only part of the total. Technical and scientific terms would add millions more. Altogether, about 200,000 English words are in common use, more than in German (184,000) and far more than in French (a mere 100,000). The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between “I wrote” and “I have written.” The Spanish cannot differentiate a chairman from a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficiency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care [all cited in The New York Times, June 18, 1989]. English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget’s Thesaurus. “Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist” [The Miracle of Language, page 54]. On the other hand, other languages have facilities we lack. Both French and German can distinguish between knowledge that results from recognition (respectively connaître and kennen) and knowledge that results from understanding (savoir and wissen). Portuguese has words that differentiate between an interior angle and an exterior one. All the Romance languages can distinguish between something that leaks into and something that leaks out of. The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. (Wouldn’t they just?) It’s sgriob. And we have nothing in English to match the Danish hygge (meaning “instantly satisfying and cozy”), the French sang-froid, the Russian glasnost, or the Spanish macho, so we must borrow the term from them or do without the sentiment. At the same time, some languages have words that we may be pleased to do without. The existence in German of a word like schadenfreude (taking delight in the misfortune of others) perhaps tells us as much about Teutonic sensitivity as it does about their neologistic versatility. Much the same could be said about the curious and monumentally unpronounceable Highland Scottish word sgiomlaireachd, which means “the habit of dropping in at mealtimes.” That surely conveys a world of information about the hazards of Highland life—not to mention the hazards of Highland orthography. Of

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.

HYGGE TIP: CREATE A COOKING CLUB A few years ago, I wanted to create some kind of system that would mean I would get to see some of my good friends on a regular basis, so we formed a cooking club. This was in part prompted by my work, as the importance of our relationships always emerges as a key indicator of why some people are happier than others. Furthermore, I wanted to organize the cooking club in a way that maximized the hygge. So instead of taking turns being the host and cooking for the five or six other people, we always cook together. That is where the hygge is. The rules are simple. Each time there is a theme, or a key ingredient—for example, duck or sausages—each person brings ingredients to make a small dish to fit the theme. It creates a very relaxed, informal, egalitarian setting, where no one person has to cater for the guests—or live up to the standards of the last fancy dinner party.