Quotes about living page 10
“I'm not living with you. We occupy the same cage. (Maggie)”
Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“I don't think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.”
Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
“We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them.”
Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka
“I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.”
John Fowles book The Magus
Daniel Martin (1977)
Source: The Magus
Context: I saw that I was from now on, for ever, contemptible. I had been and remained, intensely depressed, but I had also been, and always would be, intensely false; in existentialist terms, inauthentic. I knew I would never kill myself, I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.
“People are often so busy living that they never stop to wonder why.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author
“Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night
Source: Tender Is the Night
“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets
Source: Sonnets (1609), XVIII
Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets
“Man can not live by bread alone… he must have peanut butter.”
Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist
Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
“Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.”
Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
“… Dreams come to tell us something about our lives that we are missing.”
James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy
Source: The Celestine Prophecy
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
"Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
Source: The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore
“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.”
Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning
Source: Man's Search for Meaning
Harriet Lerner (1944) American psychologist
Source: Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up
“There is only one dream worth having…to live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead.”
Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist
From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf. <br class="br">Speeches <br class="br">Source: The Cost of Living
Barack Obama book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
“We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia
Trotzky's Diary in Exile — 1935 (1958)
Source: Diary in Exile, 1935
“We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game
Source: The Angel's Game
Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement
Educational Thinkers http://books.google.com/books?id=O6Fp2zaQVVMC&pg=PA151&dq=Muhammad+Iqbal+Brahmin&hl=en&ei=hJQaTKPPKMewcfnqzIEK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Muhammad%20Iqbal%20Brahmin&f=false
“Woke up this morning afraid I was gonna live.”
Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation
Source: Prozac Nation
“I was born when he kissed me, I died when he left me, I lived a few weeks while he loved me”
Dorothy B. Hughes book In a Lonely Place
Variant: I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.
Source: In a Lonely Place
“Give into love or live in fear”
Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright
Rent (1996)
“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved”
Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director
Source: Big Stone Gap
Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer
Source: Time Cat
“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
Saul Bellow book Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories
"Him with His Foot in His Mouth," from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4], p. 11
General sources
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
February 28, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)
“… I'm terrified of passive acquiescence. I live in intensity.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
Source: A Writer's Diary
Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet
Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Variant: Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. (Translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
“Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with you.”
Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms
Source: A Farewell to Arms
“In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.”
Robert Kirkman (1978) American comic book writer
Source: The Walking Dead, Vol. 01: Days Gone Bye
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, chairman, committee on Congress of Constructive Patriotism (January 10, 1917). Roosevelt’s sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, read the letter to a national meeting, January 26, 1917. Reported in Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism, Washington, D.C., January 25–27, 1917 (1917), p. 172
1910s
Context: Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
“The heart will break, but broken live on.”
George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
Variant: And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.
“Life is to be lived, not controlled.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: Don’t believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. <br class="br">Source: Often attributed to Twain, but sourced to Robert J. Burdette, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/06/world-owes/
“Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator
Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries
“For all the accomplishments of molecular biology, we still can't tell a live cat from a dead cat.”
Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist
“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
“Live as if you have faith,” she said, “and faith shall be
given to you.”
Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander
Source: Tatiana and Alexander
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 3
Source: Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living
“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard (1945) American writer
Source: " The Writing Life http://www.tikkun.org/mediagallery/download.php?mid=20090505114218282" (link is to PDF download), Tikkun magazine, Volume 3, Number 6, 1988
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
“You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Reported as an inscription quoting Lincoln in an English college in The Baptist Teacher for Sunday-school Workers : Vol. 36 (August 1905), p. 483. The portion beginning with "stand with anybody..." is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech..
Posthumous attributions
“Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.”
Stephen King book The Shining
Source: The Shining (1977)
Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Variant: I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
“Life is too short to be lived badly.”
Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist
Source: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Source: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26
Context: Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.
Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
