Quotes about life
page 10

“Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming”

Myrna Loy (1905–1993) American film, television and stage actress

“I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge

Way, Knowledge, Thinking

“As soon as something stops being fun, I think it’s time to move on. Life is too short to be unhappy. Waking up stressed and miserable is not a good way to live.”

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

Source: Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons In Life

Way, Thinking, Time, Powerful

“There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

World, Soul

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”

Robert Byrne (1928–2013) American chess player and writer

Success, Happy, Depressing, Life

“We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Source: Island Beneath the Sea

For women, Hope, Positive

“The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

“But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Truth, Way, Soul, Heart

“We, all who live, have
A life that is lived
And another life that is thought,
And the only life we have
It's the one that is divided
In right or wrong.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

Cars

“There is one irrefutable law of the universe: We are each responsible for our own life. If you’re holding anyone else accountable for your happiness, you’re wasting your time. You must be fearless enough to give yourself the love you didn’t receive.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Source: What I Know For Sure

Love, Happiness, Law, Universe

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Variant: Often quoted as: Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to take seriously.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Lord Darlington, Act I

Funny

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

“If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Source: The Theater and Its Double

Imagination

“Life is too short to be in a hurry." If we are always on the go, we are reacting to the exigencies of day-to-day life rather than allowing ourselves the space to create a happy life.”

Tal Ben-Shahar (1970) American psychologist

Source: Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment

Happiness

“He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Variant: He who loves not Wine, Women and Song
Remains a fool his whole life long

Love, Women, Fools, Wine

“My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

Future, Good Morning

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Children, People, Lie, World

“Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Beauty, Way, Understanding, Time

“Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.”

Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician

1848 (quoted in Infections and Inequalities by Paul Farmer, page 1.

Lie, Dead

“When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

“Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Love, Bird, Sea

“There is no right life in the wrong one.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life

Depressing, Good Morning

“The love we do not show here on Earth is the only thing that hurts us in the after-life.”

Steven Spielberg (1946) American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur

Love, Hurt

“Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Source: The Complete Conversations with God

“When we surrender when we do not fight with life when it calls upon us we are lifted and the strength to do what needs to be done finds us.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Source: The Invitation

Fight

“A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest symptoms but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centred, competitive, goal-oriented lives. Overpreoccupied with their past and their future, they tend to have a limited awarenessof the present and thus a limited ability to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life. They concentrate on manipulating the external world and measure their living standard by the quantity of material possessions, while they become ever more alienated from their inner world and unable to appreciate the process of life. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

People, World, Past, Future

“Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still “reigns” and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial manipulation.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Full Text of 1916 Edition

Reality

“Some of the worst mistakes in my life were haircuts”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

“Life is in Fate's hands now. You made your choice to stay… it's too late to change that, so stop agonizing over it…. You're making my scales itch.

Saphira, from "Eragon”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Fate, Change

“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

This is a paraphrase of statement in a thank you note from Carroll to a childhood friend, the actress Ellen Terry, published in Ellen Terry, Player in Her Time (1997), p. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=2PkzZ9KaRlwC&lpg=PA126&vq=%22do%20for%20others%22&pg=PA126#v=snippet&q=%22do%20for%20others%22&f=fals by Nina Auerbach: "... and so you have found out that secret — one of the deep secrets of Life — that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others?" Disputed

Secret

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love, War, Learning

“I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

When asked what he thought of the first Reformed Parliament, as quoted in Words on Wellington (1889) by Sir William Fraser, p. 12.

“The only goal is in the process. The process is the thing…with little flashes of light here and there. Those are the gigs, those are the live shows. But it’s the life in between—that’s all I got.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

From Grace EPK (Electronic Press Kit)

Light

“In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure and hold converse with othe pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. For no impure thing is allowed to approach the pure. These are the sort of words, Simmias, which the true lovers of wisdom cannot help saying to one another, and thinking.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Wisdom, God, Truth, Soul

“There are three successive states of morality answering to the three principal stages of human life; the personal, the domestic, and the social stage.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 104

Success, Personality

“Once in one's life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived”

Sylvester Stallone (1946) American actor, screenwriter, and film director

Sylvester Stallone, interviewed by Rob Carnevale in " Sylvester Stallone: Rocky Balboa http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2007/01/15/sylvester_stallone_rocky_balboa_2007_interview.shtml", BBC (28 October 2014).

“There is no such thing in life as normal”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Lauretta Bender / Quotes / 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency, "Testimony of Dr. Lauretta Bender, senior psychiatrist, Belleveu hospital Newyork N.Y." http://www.thecomicbooks.com/bender.html From songs

Sad, Moving On

“The new profession of public relations has grown up because of the increasing complexity of modern life and the consequent necessity for making the actions of one part of the public understandable to other sectors of the public. It is due, too, to the increasing dependence of organized power of all sorts upon public opinion. Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence. Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts.
The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media of communications and the group formations of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public.”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Source: Propaganda (1928), p. 63

Education, Communication, Idea, Understanding

“The sunflower keeps its eye on the sun with its back turned to the shade. We die facing life with our backs to death, as if we were walking out of a room backwards.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Death, Sun

“The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life they're free
Stars belong to everyone
They cling there for you and for me.”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

The Best Things in Life Are Free
Song lyrics, Sam Cooke at the Copa (1964)

Star

“The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Savior. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep Him in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to his own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 397

History, Study, Teachers, Time

“That's what I like about the World Series. It gives me a chance to talk with lots of writers, a chance for them to understand me better than in the past. When Roberto Clemente is mentioned, he is always mentioned with injuries. They say I'm moody, selfish, temperamental. That's not the real me. I was born with a serious face. If you know my life, if you know me well by taking the time to learn to know me, then you'll understand me. Most places I go, people say "smile." I don't like that. I don't believe in being a hypocrite. If the occasion is for smiling, I will be smiling. I'm a very happy person.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Says He is Very Happy" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=42oeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QckEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1983%2C4221206 by the Associated Press, in The Daytona Beach Morning Journal (October 16, 1971), p. 1-C Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Happiness, People, World, Smile

“Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond our little blue mud ball--or go extinct.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

[Elon Musk, http://www.esquire.com/features/75-most-influential/elon-musk-1008, Esquire, 1 October 2008, 29 November 2012]

“Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end, life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.”

V.S. Naipaul book Half a Life

Half a Life (2001)

“Liberalism, on the other hand, regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situations, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.”

Morris Raphael Cohen (1880–1947) American philosopher

Source: The Faith of a Liberal', (1946), p. 438

“Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood — all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Happiness, Feeling, Spring, Question

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Pain, World, Penalty, Way

“If by our sacrifice — yours and mine,' said Onos T'oolan, 'the pain of one life can be ended; if, by our deaths, this one can be guided home… we will judge this a worthy cause.'
'This Crippled God — he is a stranger to us all.'
'It is enough that in the place he calls home, he is no stranger.”

Steven Erikson book The Crippled God

The Crippled God (2011)

Death, God, Pain, Home

“My sons’ birthday; we have a grand feeding
Another sons thread ceremony is proceeding
Life is busy you know if you ever say
The death god will be laughing behind you, I say
Not eaten dinner, have not seen the favourite show
Some debtors are waiting to get my loan, No way
Once your purpose is over, no time is wasted away
Think meanwhile of Purandara Vittala with a bow.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this quote Dasa is warning against the inevitable when one is busy with worldly chores as given here[Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 81]

Death, God, Way, Birthday

“If I am to live longer, perhaps I must live out my old age, seeing and hearing less, understanding worse, coming to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful, and growing worse than those to whom I was once superior. Indeed, life would be unliveable, even if I did not notice the change. And if I see the change, how could life not be even more wretched and unpleasant?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Memorabilia IV.8.8
Xenophon

Age, Understanding, Learning, Change

“The United States represents the reductio ad absurdum of the negative and the most senile aspects of Western civilization. What in Europe exist in diluted form are magnified and concentrated in the United States whereby they are revealed as the symptoms of disintegration and cultural and human regression. The American mentality can only be interpreted as an example of regression, which shows itself in the mental atrophy towards all higher interests and incomprehension of higher sensibility. The American mind has limited horizons, one conscribed to everything which is immediate and simplistic, with the inevitable consequence that everything is made banal, basic and leveled down until it is deprived of all spiritual life. Life itself in American terms is entirely mechanistic. The sense of I in America belongs entirely to the physical level of existence. The typical American neither has spiritual dilemmas nor complications: he is a natural joiner and conformist.”

Julius Evola (1898–1974) Italian philosopher and esotericist

American "Civilization" (from "Civilta Americana") http://lkwdpl.org/wildideas/mysticalgeography.html

Nature, Sense

“For after death, as they say, the genius of each individual, to whom he belonged in life, leads him to a certain place in which the dead are gathered together for judgment, whence they go into the world below, following the guide who is appointed to conduct them from this world to the other; and when they have there received their due and remained their time, another guide brings them back again after many revolutions of ages.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Age, World, Time

“Teachings that pointed the way beyond the dysfunction of the human mind, the way out of the collective insanity, were distorted and became themselves part of the insanity.
And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

People, Religion, Way, Parting

“I was born under a lucky star, and I have nothing whatsoever to regret. I wouldn’t change a thing about my life.”

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

In his interview with Nina Myskow for Saga magazine, July 2007

Star, Change

“Social life is merely a web of reciprocal hypnosis where people hypnotize each other without ever realizing it”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

People

“Music is not a hobby, not even a passion with me; music is me. I feel what people get out of me is this outlook on life, which comes out in my music. My music is the last expression of all that.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

John Guinn (December 22, 1982) "Rubinstein Was His Music", Detroit Free Press, p. 8D.
Attributed

People, Music, Feeling, Passion

“There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon the practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application; and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.”

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

Lecture on "Electrical Units of Measurement" (3 May 1883), published in Popular Lectures Vol. I, p. 73, as quoted in The Life of Lord Kelvin (1910) by Silvanus Phillips Thompson

World, Soul, Mathematics, Knowledge

“The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don't really want, in order to impress people they don't really like.”

Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

"The Great Disruption", In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, 17 Jun 1999, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545kh

Money, People, Way, Business

“Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 47
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Star, Change

“I'm addicted to perfection. Problem with my life is I was always also addicted to chaos. Perfect chaos.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.details.com/culture-trends/news-and-politics/201008/interview-boxing-mike-tyson
On himself

Problem, Perfection

“A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

“He goes seeking liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who gives his life for it.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto I, lines 71–72 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

La vie est hérissée de ces épines, et je n'y sais d'autre remède que de cultiver son jardin.
Letter to Pierre-Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain (21 October 1769), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1882], vol. XIV, letter # 7692 (p. 478)
Citas

“Every time you stand at a crossroads of life and death, you have two universes in front of you; one loses all relation to you because you die, the other maintains its relation to you because you survive in it. Just as you would take off your clothes, you abandon the universe in which you are still alive. In other words, various universes emerge around each of us the way tree limbs and leaves branch away from the trunk.”

Kenzaburō Ōe book A Personal Matter

A Personal Matter (1964)

Death, Way, Tree, Universe

“Rubin, I am not of your world. I've spent all my life in prison. When I was a child I was an orphan and too ugly to be adopted. Now I am too beautiful to be set free.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

As quoted by Jerry Rubin in recounting his visit with Manson in We Are Everywhere (1971)

World, Beauty

“Lastly, we must also know what Baptism signifies, and why God has ordained just such external sign and ceremony for the Sacrament by which we are first received into the Christian Church. But the act or ceremony is this, that we are sunk under the water, which passes over us, and afterwards are drawn out again. These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam, and after that the resurrection of the new man, both of which must take place in us all our lives, so that a truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever to be continued.”

Martin Luther Luther's Large Catechism

"On Infant Baptism," Large Catechism (1529)

Death, God, Water, Parting

“I think magic is very related to happiness. So it is not there all the time, but there are beautiful moments of magic in everyone's life.”

Penélope Cruz (1974) Spanish actress

Cinema.com interview (2001)

Happiness, Beauty, Thinking, Time

“I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

3 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Girl, Time, Despair

“It was a perpetual holiday – and what an assortment of people. You could still enjoy yourself in those days! Machinery didn't take up the whole of life; there was time for living, and we made the most of it... I found as many magnificent girls to paint as I wanted; in those days one wasn't reduced to following a little model around for an hour and then being treated as a disgusting old man at the end of it.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 28 : Renoir's quote to Vollard referring to the Isle Grenouillere, where he painted in 1869, together with Claude Monet.

People, Girl, Time, Holiday

“I'm the interpreter. I'm the one who takes your words and brings them to life. I was trained to sing and dance and laugh, and that's what I want to do.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

Attributed

Singing, Dance, Training

“In the name of Indian national life, in the name of religion, I appeal to all in each of the two countries who hold position…let them begin each in their own community to work untiringly towards this end: boldly to repudiate feelings of hatred and intolerance, actively to condemn and suppress acts of violence and aggression, earnestly to strive to exorcise suspicions…I appeal in the name of national life because communal tension is eating into it as a canker…I appeal in the name of religion because I can appeal to nothing nobler, and because religion is the language of the soul, and it is a change of soul that India needs today.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech as Viceroy of India (1926), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, 1965), pp. 223-234
Viceroy of India

Religion, Feeling, Soul, Communication

“Alright sir,
Sure I'll have another one, it's early.
Three olives, shake it up, I like it dirty (dirty).
Tequila for my friend it makes her flirty (flirty).
Trust me.
I'm the instigator of underwear,
Showing up here and there uh oh (oh no).
I'm always on a mission from the get go.
So what if it's only 1 o'clock in the afternoon?
It's never too soon to send out all the invitations to the last night”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

of your life
Bad Influence, written by Pink, Billy Mann, Butch Walker, and Robin Mortensen Lynch & Niklas Olovson
Song lyrics, Funhouse (2008)

Night

“Over the years I kept everything and anything from stuff and things that I came across during my life in trade, if they had emotional value to me. Always the simple goods and tools, from the farmers, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the baker and so on. I loved those things most in which I saw reflected the struggle for life very clearly.... old used up shoes, trousers, jackets, hats and children's vests, which I found in the rags, often patched up endlessly.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Door de jaren heen heb ik van alles en nog wat bewaard aan dingen en voorwerpen die ik in mijn leven in de handel tegenkwam, als ze gevoelswaarde voor me hadden. Altijd eenvoudig gebruiksgoed en gereedschap van de boer, de smid, de timmerman, de bakker enzovoorts. Dingen waarin ik de strijd om het bestaan het duidelijkst weerspiegeld zag vond ik het mooist.. ..afgetrapte oude schoenen, broeken, jassen, hoeden en kindervestjes, die ik in de vodden vond, vaak tot in den treure versteld en opgelapt.
Source: Jopie de Verteller' (2010) - postumous, p. 19

Love, Children, Shoe

“What is life? Life is like a big obstacle, put in front of your optical to slow you down, and every time you think you gotten past it, it's gonna come back around and tackle you to the damn ground. What are friends? Friends are people that you think are your friends, but they're really your enemies with secret identities and disguises to hide their true colors, so just when you're close enough to be brothers, they wanna come back and cut your throat when you ain't looking. What is money? Money is what makes a man act funny. Money is the root of all evil. Money'll make them same friends come back around swearing that they was always down. What is life? I'm tired of life!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"'If I Had" (Track 6).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Money, People, Secret, Color

“Successful people do things, and get over with it, and leave others to live their life off it. I DO them. And then I leave it to others to live their life off it.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi

People, Success

“In one of the sinking spells [due to Cholera] which was thought to be the last, my father rushed into the room. I still see his pallid face as he tried to cheer me in tones belying his assurance. "Perhaps," I said, "I may get well if you will let me study engineering." "You will go to the best technical institution in the world," he solemnly replied, and I knew that he meant it. A heavy weight was lifted from my mind.… I came to life like Lazarus to the utter amazement of everybody.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

World, Study

“Let me be as weird as I fuckin' like. It's my fuckin' life.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

May 21, 1994, Melody Maker.

“For the gospel proclaims that God is with us now, actively fighting the forces which would make man captive. And it is the task of theology and the Church to know where God is at work so that we can join him in this fight against evil. In America we know where the evil is. We know that men are shot and lynched. We know that men are crammed into ghettos…. There is a constant battle between Christ and Satan, and it is going on now. If we make this message contemporaneous with our own life situation, what does Christ's defeat of Satan mean for us?… The demonic forces of racism are real for the black man. Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man "the devil." The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by the demonic forces.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), pp. 39-41

Men, God, Evil, Christ

“In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

As quoted in Hitchcock (revised edition 1984) by François Truffaut with the collaboration of Helen G. Scott, p. 102.

God

“If they made a film of my life, I think they should get George Clooney to play me. He's a fantastic actor and my wife thinks he would be ideal.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/news/newsid=1033132.html Chelsea FC

Thinking

“Around 1945, daily life might have been hard, but the reputation of Disney was at its highest. The voices of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had stabilized, Snow White and Bambi were huge hits and had received a number of international prizes. It really was like the brightness of a rising sun. And then Japanese children after the war had no choice but to face the flood of Disney comics that accompanied the brainwashing of “American democracy.””

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

That was their merit as propaganda against the Japanese. Tezuka Osamu and American Comics http://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/, (1973), as quoted by Ryan Holmberg, The Comics Journal, Jul 16, 2012.

War, Children, Democracy, Sun

“In consequence of my ill luck my life was again made a misery to me, so that I again ran away and went hawking on my own account, but my deformity had grown to such an extent, so that I could not move about the town without having a crowd of people gather around me. I then went into the infirmary at Leicester, where I remained for two or three years, when I had to undergo an operation on my face, having three or four ounces of flesh cut away; so thought I, I'll get my living by being exhibited about the country. Knowing Mr. Sam Torr, Gladstone Vaults, Wharf Street, Leicester, went in for Novelties, I wrote to him, he came to see me, and soon arranged matters, recommending me to Mr. Ellis, Bee-hive Inn, Nottingham, from whom I received the greatest kindness and attention. In making my first appearance before the public, who have treated me well — in fact I may say I am as comfortable now as I was uncomfortable before. I must now bid my kind readers adieu.”

Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) English man with severe deformities

Autobiographical sideshow pamphlet

People, Appearance, Bee, Country

“Learning is to a man as the leaves and branches are to a tree, and it can be said that he should not be without it. Learning is not only reading books, however, but is rather something that we study to integrate with our own way of life.
One who is born into the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first acquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements in loyalty, and, listening to just one of his dictums each day, will in a month know 30 precepts. Needless to say, if in a year he learns 300 precepts, at the end of that time he will be much the better.
Thus, a man can divide his mind into three parts: he should throw out those thoughts that are evil, take up those ideas that are good, and become intimate with his own wisdom… I would honor and call wise the man who penetrates this principle, though he lacks the knowledge of a single Chinese character. As for those who are learned in other matters, I would avoid them regardless of how deep their knowledge might be. That is how shallow and untalented this monk is.”

Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) Japanese daimyo of the Sengoku period

William Scott Wilson, ‎Gregory Lee. Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, 1982. p 95

Wisdom, Books, Way, Idea

“In that book which is
My memory…
On the first page
That is the chapter when
I first met you
Appear the words…
Here begins a new life.”

Dante Alighieri book Vita Nuova

Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter I, opening lines (as reported in The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time by Leslie Pockell)

Books, Appearance, Memory

“… exclude the need for appearances: what counts is not appearances; the value of life does not depend on the approval of others or on success, but on what we have inside us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in "Imposition of the Ashes - Homily of pope Francis" at www.vatican.va (5 March 2014) http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140305_omelia-ceneri_en.html 2010s, 2014

Appearance, Success, Dependency

“I think of life as an inn where I have to stay until the abyss coach arrives. I don't know where it will take me, for I know nothing.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 40
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Considero a vida uma estalagem onde tenho que me demorar até que chegue a diligência do abismo. Não sei onde ela me levará, porque não sei nada.

Thinking

“Now what we call “bourgeois,” when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for a balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposite that arise in human conduct.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

“But then I ask myself, I have never truly known the man whose flank I have led one difficult and ascetic life for. Perhaps he has played with my idealism, taking advantage for dark scopes that he has held hidden within himself. How can I expect to know a man who has never opened his heart to me? Till now, I do not know what he really thought, knew or wanted. I was alone with my thoughts and my suspicions. And now, the veil that covered this statue has fallen to the ground and instead of an art work, a monster has revealed itself. Now we leave to the historians of the future the task of discussing if that statue was therefore a sin from the beginning, or was changed because of the circumstances. I continue to make the same error: I try to think back to his humble origins. But then I remember how many sons of these people have sealed their history with his name.”

Alfred Jodl (1890–1946) German general

About Hitler, Nuremberg Trial, March 10, 1946. Quoted in "Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader" by Percy Ernst Schramm.

People, Art, Error, History

“Parents always live a less pure life than their children, because they condone everything they do. The ability to condone everything in oneself but practically nothing in one's children is the boon that "experience" bestows on humanity. What parents call experience is really nothing but attempts, successful to the point of sheer cynicism, to belie everything which they found pure, true and right when they were young. They themselves don't notice the awful cynicism behind this incessant talk of "experience" being the highest aim in life: they only notice "inexperience" in their children, that is, the form of inexperience called purity and integrity, and then they get annoyed.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 135

Children, Parent, Success

“What is our life? A play of passion;
our mirth: the music of division;
our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
only we die in earnest, that's no jest.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

"On the Life of Man" (1612)
Attributed

Music, Search, Passion, Sun

“I did, however, pass by one young girl, and she was like a goddess who came down from heaven. She was walking alone, in her bathing suit, with her luscious blonde hair blowing in the wind. I couldn’t help but slyly admire her beauty as we passed by each other. I was scared. I was scared that she might view me as nothing but an inferior insect who’s presence ruins her atmosphere. Her beauty was intoxicating! And then, just as we passed each other, she actually looked at me. She looked at me and smiled. Most girls never even deigned to look at me, and this one actually looked at me and smiled. I had never felt so euphoric in my life. One smile. One smile was all it took to brighten my entire day. The power that beautiful women have is unbelievable. They can temporarily turn a desperate boy’s whole world around just by smiling.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Longing

Women, World, Smile, Beauty

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Money, Happiness, World, Way

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days...
Harvard University address (1978)

World, Courage, Support, Loss

“My father, a bookkeeper who never earned more than $11,000 a year in his life, sat there, writing out a $25 check to the NAACP. When I asked him why, he said discrimination against anyone is discrimination against us all. And I never forgot that. Indeed, his philanthropy was a gift, not just to that organization, but to me.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/education/mayor_michael_bloomberg_delivers_slate_60_dinner_keynote_address_at_william_j_clinton_presidential_library
Philanthropy

“Politics has been called the “art of the possible,” and it actually is a realm akin to art insofar as, like art, it occupies a creatively mediating position between spirit and life, the idea and reality.”

Thomas Mann Germany and the Germans

Speech at the US Library of Congress (29 May 1945); published as "Germany and the Germans" ["Deutschland und die Deutschen"] in Die Neue Rundschau [Stockholm] (October 1945), p. 58, as translated by Helen T. Lowe-Porter

Art, Idea, Reality

“I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself “What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?” I couldn’t believe my life was actually turning out this way. There I was, practicing shooting with real guns because I had a plan to carry out a massacre. Why did things have to be this way, I silently questioned myself as I looked at the handgun I was holding in front of me. I paid my fee and left the range within minutes, feeling as if I was going to be sick.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Way, Feeling, Question

Quotes about life page 10

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Quotes about life
page 10