If You Would Be Happy

Simple-living advocate Ruth Stout, author of Gardening Without Work, believed that life just doesn't have to be so hard! In If You Would Be Happy, she once again helps you find the sense (and humor) amid all the nonsense that life offers, and find simplicity amid the complex rough and tumble of life. She says: "It is happiness, not perfection, we're concerned with here, and they're not necessarily even related." "Our activities are successful insofar as they are giving us real satisfaction." "Any experience, trivial or important, is likely to give us more pleasure if we are interested, unhurried, and are looking for the best the situation has to offer. It also helps if we expect something good, for in that case we don't overlook it if it's there in front of us." "We must forever keep in mind that it is our inside feelings we are aiming to change; we are really going to become a serene and pleasant person, not merely give the appearance of one." If You Would Be Happy is volume 3 of our Ruth Stout Classics series. For the rest of the series, visit http://www.nortoncreekpress.com.

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Notă biografică

Ruth Stout was a beloved advocate of organic gardening and simple living. Her books and magazine articles popularized her simple living to millions. Ruth was born in Kansas. Her mother was a Quaker with a rate knack for coping with her nine children. One of Ruth's brothers, Rex Stout, became the creator of the well-known Nero Wolfe mysteries, and Ruth herself began selling stories locally at an early age. As a teenager, Ruth accompanied prohibitionist Carrie Nation on a saloon-smashing excursion (saloons were illegal in Kansas City at the time). In 1923 Ruth accompanied fellow Quakers to Russia to assist in famine relief. Ruth moved to New York City, and before her marriage to Fred Rossiter she worked at a variety of jobs-nursemaid, telephone operator, bookkeeper, secretary, office manager, owner of a Greenwich Village tearoom. After her marriage, she and her husband moved to an old farm, Poverty Hollow, in West Redding, Connecticut. Ruth's career since moving to the country was that of cook, housekeeper, gardener, lecturer, and, of course, writer. Ruth wrote several books and innumerable newspaper and magazine columns. She died in 1980 at the age of 96.