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Who really said it

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things

Not Kurt Vonnegut — actually Robert Brault Robert Brault b. 1938 · American aphorist & freelance writer
Disputed In copyright

Kurt Vonnegut never wrote this. The line is the work of aphorist Robert Brault, who says he wrote it for the National Enquirer in 1985; Reader’s Digest reprinted it in its September 1986 issue. His original read “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back…” — the popular Vonnegut version adds “in life” and swaps in “you’ll.”

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things” Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. —Robert Brault (frequently misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut)

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Kurt Vonnegut. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Robert Brault). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Robert Brault — American aphorist & freelance writer. Theme: "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The documented source

Author
Robert Brault
First published
National Enquirer, 1985
Reprint
Reader’s Digest, “Quotable Quotes,” September 1986, p. 139
Anthologized
The Book of Positive Quotations (Fairview Press, 1997)

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.

Brault’s original wording. The version pinned on Vonnegut — “Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you’ll look back…” — is a lightly altered later variant.

Robert Brault: “Who Wrote Enjoy The Little Things?”

How we verified this

  • Robert Brault states plainly: “I wrote the quote for National Enquirer in 1985… reprinted by Reader’s Digest in its September 1986 issue” on his own site.
  • Brault notes that from 1986 to 2009 the line appeared in anthologies always credited to him, and that the Vonnegut misattribution only began around 2009.
  • The Vonnegut-credited wording is preserved on Goodreads, showing the reworded “in life…you’ll look back” variant.
In copyright

The aphorism was written by a living author and first published in 1985 (National Enquirer; reprinted Reader’s Digest, 1986), so it is in copyright, with rights held by Robert Brault. The widely shared “Vonnegut” wording is a lightly altered variant of that copyrighted original, not a public-domain or independently sourced text.

Fact-check

How Vonnegut got the credit

This is a clean case of a credited, copyrighted magazine aphorism being rebranded online under a famous novelist’s name.

Kurt Vonnegut Misattributed

No Vonnegut novel, essay, speech, or letter contains this line. The credit appears only on social media and quote sites; Brault documents that it surfaced around 2009, long after decades of correct attribution to him. See Brault’s account.

A reworded variant Altered

Brault’s original is “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back…” The viral form inserts “in life” and changes “may” to “you’ll,” as seen on the Vonnegut Goodreads page.

The real author is aphorist Robert Brault, who published the line in 1985 — a decade before it was ever linked to Kurt Vonnegut.

Context

Why the mix-up sticks

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the internet’s great quote magnets: warm, plainspoken wisdom gets pinned to him because it sounds like something he’d say. But this gentle aphorism about savoring small moments has a paper trail that predates its Vonnegut phase by more than twenty years — and it points to a working aphorist, not a novelist.

Robert Brault made a living writing exactly these kinds of compact lines for magazines. When his name fell off the quote in the social-media era, a bigger name filled the vacuum — and the slightly smoothed wording (“in life…you’ll look back”) is itself a fingerprint of that unattributed re-sharing.

A credited 1985 magazine line, rebranded as Vonnegut two decades later.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Gratitude Happiness Simplicity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Who Wrote “Enjoy The Little Things”? — Robert Braultrbrault.blogspot.com

The author’s own account, with publication dates and the original wording.
Robert Brault — biographical sketchrbrault.blogspot.com

Background on Brault, the American aphorist behind the line.
Quote attributed to Kurt Vonnegut (the misattribution)goodreads.com

Shows the reworded ‘in life…you’ll’ variant credited to Vonnegut.
Quote correctly credited to Robert Braultgoodreads.com

The original ‘may look back’ wording under Brault’s name.
Kurt Vonnegut — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced and misattributed sections for cross-checking what Vonnegut actually wrote.

The author

About Robert Brault

Robert Brault

b. 1938 · American aphorist & freelance writer

Robert Brault is an American freelance writer and aphorist, born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1938, known for short, epigrammatic observations on everyday life. Many of his one-liners circulated for decades in anthologies and periodicals such as Reader’s Digest before the internet stripped his name from them. This aphorism — among his best known — is a textbook case: it drifted from a credited magazine filler into a viral “Vonnegut” meme.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary attribution

Robert Brault, aphorism first published in the National Enquirer (1985); reprinted in Reader’s Digest, “Quotable Quotes,” September 1986, p. 139; anthologized in The Book of Positive Quotations (Minneapolis: Fairview Press, 1997).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/enjoy-the-little-things-in-life-for-one-day-youll-look-back

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