„To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?“

„And what is the point of this story?
What information pertains?
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.“

—  Paul Simon American musician, songwriter and producer 1941

Train In The Distance
Song lyrics, Hearts and Bones (1983)

„It is human life you value isn't it? Not its worth. Just human life. As if it were gold and could be neither good nor bad nor worth more nor worth less but must always be worth the same no matter what. One human life is one human life to you. You are absurd! Like your democracy, which you imagine you got from the Greeks, who had slaves. One vote for each person. What a stupid idea! The worst in your eyes possess the same value as the best. You have no way of differentiating between them.“

—  Alex Miller, book The Ancestor Game

Page 136.
The Ancestor Game (1992)

„Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us.“

—  James Nasmyth Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor 1808 - 1890

p. 1
Context: Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of ancestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially in the more civilised races. At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for the history of our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves. It may be a generous enthusiasm, or, as some might say, a harmless vanity, to take pride in the honour of their name. The gifts of nature, however, are more valuable than those of fortune; and no line of ancestry, however honourable, can absolve us from the duty of diligent application and perseverance, or from the practice of the virtues of self-control and self-help.

„What we cannot bear removes us from life; what remains can be borne.“

—  Marcus Aurelius, book Meditations

Source: Meditations

„We pass. But what the bee knows, the wisdom that sustains our passing life — however much we deny or ignore it — that for ever remains.“

—  P. L. Travers Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist 1899 - 1996

What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)
Context: The Sphinx, the Pyramids, the stone temples are, all of them, ultimately, as flimsy as London Bridge; our cities but tents set up in the cosmos. We pass. But what the bee knows, the wisdom that sustains our passing life — however much we deny or ignore it — that for ever remains.

„The life that is worth living, and the only life that is worth living, is the life of effort, the life of effort to attain what is worth striving for.“

—  Theodore Roosevelt American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858 - 1919

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: Of course, the worst of all lives is the vicious life; the life of a man who becomes a positive addition to the forces of evil in a community. Next to that and when I am speaking to people who, by birth and training and standing, ought to amount to a great deal, I have a right to say only second to it in criminality comes the life of mere vapid ease, the ignoble life of a man who desires nothing from his years but that they shall be led with the least effort, the least trouble, the greatest amount of physical enjoyment or intellectual enjoyment of a mere dilettante type. The life that is worth living, and the only life that is worth living, is the life of effort, the life of effort to attain what is worth striving for.

„That's been a question, one of the big questions in my life. 'What is a human?' What are the elements that make a human?' It's a search for… how many elements do you get before you say, "Yes, it's human," where before you were saying it's not human.“

—  Gene Roddenberry American television screenwriter and producer 1921 - 1991

„Nothing in life worth having comes easy.
That is unless you are rich.“

—  RJ Intindola (Gandolfo)

2020

„Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child’s dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love.“

—  Yehudi Menuhin American violinist and conductor 1916 - 1999

In: A message of Lord Menuhin http://www.menuhin-foundation.com/, International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation.

„What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get woven into Hades' underwear?“

—  Rick Riordan, book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

„Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.“

—  Sara Zarr American children's writer 1970

Source: Sweethearts

„This textbook says "All the many forms of life on Earth today are descended from a common ancestor." What? You mean the birds and the bananas have a common ancestor?!“

—  Kent Hovind American young Earth creationist 1953

100 Reasons Evolution is So Stupid! (2001)

„What is the worth of anything we do? The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life“

—  Christopher Paolini, book Eragon

Source: Eragon

„And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?“

—  Milan Kundera, book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 8
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight

„To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.“

—  Jean Paul Sartre French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary cri… 1905 - 1980

Source: No Exit and Three Other Plays

„We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.“

—  Paulo Coelho, book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 93

„Don’t let life pass you by before you realise that it was worth living.“

—  Hill Zaini Bruneian singer 1987

Borneo Bulletin, 2 October 2009

„The pattern of life is not woven ahead of time, like cloth to be worn later as a tunic. Rather, life is woven at the very instant you live it.“

—  Brian Bates British academic 1944

The Way of the Wyrd : Tales of an Anglo-Saxon Sorcerer (1983)
Context: All our lives are locked together in the shimmering world of wyrd in which all things are enmeshed and connected to one another by the threads of wyrd. … The wyrd sisters spin the web of wyrd and weave the loom of life, they do not thereby determine it … the wyrd sisters simply express the will of wyrd. And so do we. We cannot control our lives, because we too are inseparable aspects of wyrd and express its will. But this is not the same as saying our life is determined. Rather, it is saying we live like an ocean voyager, trimming our sails to the winds and tides of wyrd as we skim across the waters of life. And cresting the waves of wyrd is something that happens at every instant. The pattern of life is not woven ahead of time, like cloth to be worn later as a tunic. Rather, life is woven at the very instant you live it.

„Think of what would happen to us in America if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional record.“

—  Thomas Lansing Masson American journalist 1866 - 1934

Thomas Lansing Masson (1922) Our American Humorists. p. ix ; Quoted in: Today's Health, (1957), p. 52.