
“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
As quoted in Zen and the Art of Making a Living : A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design (1999) by Laurence G. Boldt, p. 118
“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
“We all have two lives. The second begins when you realize you only have one.”
“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”
Review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; also quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (2002) by Avi Sagi, p. 43
Context: It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched.
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness.
The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.
“When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them.”
Nobel Address (1991)
Context: A period of transition to a new quality in all spheres of society's life is accompanied by painful phenomena. When we were initiating perestroika we failed to properly assess and foresee everything. Our society turned out to be hard to move off the ground, not ready for major changes which affect people's vital interests and make them leave behind everything to which they had become accustomed over many years. In the beginning we imprudently generated great expectations, without taking into account the fact that it takes time for people to realize that all have to live and work differently, to stop expecting that new life would be given from above.
Kōnosuke Matsushita in: Nihon Seisansei Honbu (1984), Strategies for productivity: international perspectives, p. 124
“Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.”
Source: The Black Obelisk
“We can only begin to live when we conceive life as
Tragedy.”
Dr. Rose Marie Toussaint http://haiti.org/dt_team/dr-rose-marie-toussaint/, Pearls of Excellence Exhibit, Haitian Embassy