Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

"Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it will elude you; but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder."

Is in the system, attributed to both Hawthorne and Thoreau. I like it, but I don't know who said it. Does anybody?

By no means definitive, but ThinkExist.com (a quote site) has this one for Hawthorne:

“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

Edited to add: found it on some other quote sites too - all attributed to Hawthorne...

So what do we do about the Thoreau quote? 77 people have it faved. Is there a way to transfer them to the Hawthorne? Or combine or something?

Should I just change the author for the quote? then I could combine it with the Hawthorne one. What do you think?

I'll leave that up to a Super-L

Oh, Rivka, dahling....

cool. do I need to post it somewhere for them to see?

I got it. But FYI, any librarian can fix things like that.

Edit the author on the wrong quote to match. Then combine quotes.

thanks :)

Thanks Rivka!

Sorry, I thought it would need a SL to edit it to be the correct wording for the quote, since it had so many followers.

No worries. You'd only need to be a SL to delete it, I believe.