“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”

— Tennessee Williams

Actually by the Chinese philosopher, educator and popular lecturer Dr. Tehyi Hsieh, Chinese epigrams inside out, and proverbs, 1948.
Misattributed
Variant: Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Tennessee Williams 139

American playwright 1911–1983

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

“That's how we continue on, and will improve our lot in life, solve the problems that arise. Partly out of necessity, partly out of this drive to improve.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I have come to associate a kind of success that we are referring to, to individuals who have a combination of attributes that are often associated with creativity. In a way they are mutants, they are different from others. And they follow their own drummer. We know what that means. And are we all like that? We are not like that. If you are, then it would be well to recognize that there were others before you. And, people like that are not very happy or content, until they are allowed to express, or they can express what's in them to express. It's that driving force that I think is like the process of evolution working on us, and in us, and with us, and through us. That's how we continue on, and will improve our lot in life, solve the problems that arise. Partly out of necessity, partly out of this drive to improve.

“Everything that happens to us, everything that we say or hear, everything we see with our own eyes or we articulate with our tongue, everything that enters through our ears, everything we are witness to (and for which we are therefore partly responsible) must find a recipient outside ourselves and we choose that recipient according to what happens or what we are told or even according to what we ourselves say.”

Javier Marías (1951) Spanish writer

Todo lo que nos sucede, todo lo que hablamos o nos es relatado, cuanto vemos con nuestros propios ojos o sale de nuestra lengua o entra por nuestros oídos, todo aquello a lo que asistimos (y de lo cual, por tanto, somos algo responsables), ha de tener un destinatario fuera de nosotros mismos, y a ese destinatario lo vamos seleccionando en función de lo que acontece o nos dicen o bien decimos nosotros.
Source: Todas las Almas [All Souls] (1989), p. 140

“The hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business – advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Page 220
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

“The occult records partly endorse the story told in the Gospels, and partly do not endorse it; they show us the life, and thus enable us to disentangle it from the myths which are intertwined therewith.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter IV. The Historical Christ

“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Letter to Mrs William Froude, 27 June 1848.

“The proper path of life is to take the tradition and spirit that is associated with consciousness as such, and to act it out in your own personal life in a way that is analogous with the way Christ acted it out in his life. What that means, in part, is the acceptance of the tragic preconditions of existence. That's partly betrayal by friends and by family and by the state, it's partly punishment for sins that you did not commit (the arbitrary nature of justice), and the fact of finitude. Your duty, and the way to set things right in the cosmos, is to accept all those details as necessary preconditions for being and to act virtuously despite all that. That's a very, very powerful idea.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? It seems to me that one should always be seeking to talk oneself out of these stark oppositions.

“We can always choose to perceive things differently. We can focus on what's wrong in our life, or we can focus on what's right.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”

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Tennessee Williams 139

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