A Man Without a Country (2005)
Context: If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
“A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.”
Source: My Name Is Asher Lev
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Chaim Potok 21
American rabbi 1929–2002Related quotes
[Walth, Brent, McCall never looked so good. But let's move on., The Oregonian, November 5, 2006, http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/editorial/1162598153219630.xml&coll=7, 2006-11-15]
“Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth living.”
Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori
et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
VIII, line 83.
Satires, Satire VIII
“We discovered Japan for Heaven sakes.”
Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit (29 October 2013), WikiLeaks. "Read the speeches Hillary Clinton wanted kept secret, part three" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/read-the-speeches-hillary-clinton-wanted-kept-secret-part-three/article/2604660, Washington Examiner (15 October 2016).
Attributed
“When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”
Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)
Variant: When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.
Source: The Time Keeper
“The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.”
1940s, Third Inaugural Address (1941)
Context: Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.
Epitaph he composed for himself a few months before he died, as quoted in Calculusː Multivariable (2006) by Steven G. Krantz and Brian E. Blank. p. 126
Unsourced variant: I used to measure the Heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. The mind belonged to Heaven, the body's shadow lies here.
“That is the true measure of love, you see, the evil one will stoop to for its sake…”
Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 292)