Quotes about living
page 11

“Understand the nature and influence of repeating patterns, from childhood experiences or even from past lives. Wthout understanding, patterns tend to repeat, unnecessarily damaging the relationship.”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love

Understanding, Nature, Past, Childhood

“There is only one true wealth in all the universe--living time.”

Frank Herbert book The Green Brain

The Green Brain (1966)
Context: There is only one true wealth in all the universe. I have given you some of it. I have given your father and your mate some of it. And your friends. This wealth is living time. Time.
Context: "A slave is one who must produce wealth for another," the Brain said. "There is only one true wealth in all the universe. I have given you some of it. I have given your father and your mate some of it. And your friends. This wealth is living time. Time. Are we slaves because we have given you more time to live?"

Universe, Time, Wealth

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

Judy Blume Tiger Eyes

Source: Tiger Eyes

Fear

“without you, dearest dearest I couldn't see or hear or feel or think - or live - I love you so and I'm never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Love, Feeling, Thinking, Night

“Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Gay Science

Life, Death, Dead

“All live to die, and rise to fall.”

Christopher Marlowe Edoardo II

Edward II

“We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Subject: Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist http://www.dailysummit.net/says/interview260802.htm, interviewed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002)

People, World, Nature

“You live and let live, eventually that becomes enough.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

“When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet… When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world…”

Kóbó Abe book The Box Man

Source: The Box Man

World, Thinking

“Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to.”

Sogyal Rinpoche (1947–2019) Tibetan Dzogchen lama of the Nyingma tradition

Life, Wisdom, People

“Sometimes my day is crammed full of people and talk and yet I have the feeling of living in utter peace and quiet. And the tree outside my window, in the evenings, is a greater experience than all those people put together.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

People, Peace, Feeling, Tree

“A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Life, Way, Personality

“Others see their possibility in the reality of you. Your message is your life lived.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Life, Reality

“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Love, Life, God, Hate

“Pick a sin we can both live with, is what I ask.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Sometimes", § 4
Red Bird (2008)
Variant: Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Life

“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action in mind.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert", in Mother Earth News No. 69 (May/June 1981)
General sources

People

“I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Variant: Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.
Source: Anthem

Failure

“I believe in using words, not fists… I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

No known source; also attributed to Susan Sarandon.[citation needed]
Disputed

People, Food, Sex, Time

“It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Happiness, Way, Spring

“No, you can't deny women their basic rights and pretend it's about your 'religious freedom'. If you don't like birth control, don't use it. Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Women, Birth, Freedom

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

Mark Twain book Life on the Mississippi

Source: Life on the Mississippi

God, Hope

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession…”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

The Gay Science (1882)

Love, Beauty, Distant

“The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, Berkeley Hills Books (2000) p. 178

Truth, Education

“As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

Source: Snow

Hate

“I'm open to everything. When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Time

“Oh, I've a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore… and if my love won't be my love, then I will live no more…”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Love, Waiting

“The brave may not live forever – But the cautious do not live at all”

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

Source: Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won't Teach You at Business School

Graduation

“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Life

“You are a victim of the rules you live by.”

Jenny Holzer (1950) American conceptual artist

“Do not dwell upon the sins and mistakes of yesterday so exclusively as to have no energy and mind left for living rightly today, and do not think that the sins of yesterday can prevent you from living purely today.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

Source: Byways of Blessedness

Thinking

“In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Learning

“99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Source: A Short History of Nearly Everything

“This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

World, Hope, Music, Way

“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

People, Forgetting

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Books, World, Way, Thinking

“When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Thinking

“Would you rather live one perfect day over and over or live your life with no perfect days but just decent ones?”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Life, Perfection

“We can only begin to live when we conceive life as
Tragedy.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Life

“You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful. You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Statement to the press in July 1969 after the release of the Plastic Ono Band's single "Give Peace a Chance", as quoted in The Beatles: An Oral History by David Pritchard and Alan Lysaght (1998) New York: Hyperion. ISBN: 0786864362. OCLC: 39093547. p. 285.
Context: It was just a gradual development over the years. Last year was "All You Need Is Love." This year it's "Give Peace a Chance." Remember love. The only hope for any of us is peace. Violence begets violence. If you want to get peace, you can get it as soon as you like if we all pull together. You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful. You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like. Okay?

Peace, Beauty, Thinking

“What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Love, Thinking, Tree

“The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow.”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

People

“Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

Source: Birds of Heaven

Life, Silence, Madness

“Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it.”

Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War

Source: The 33 Strategies of War

Life, Books, Way, Idea

“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book VIII, 1155a.5
Nicomachean Ethics
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

Source: The Call of Cthulhu

World, Star

“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Variant: To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 17
Context: Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. <!-- p. 205

Life, Mountain, Future

“The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

World

“To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fashion

“If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Life, God, People, Religion

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

God, Memory, Past, Future

“A soul needs a purpose to live and so I concluded that my purpose was to kill everyone besides myself. I felt alive.

--Gaara”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Soul

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Life, Happiness, Joy

“We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Love, Dreams, Childhood, Falseness

“People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

People, Truth, Time

“True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26 "The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life"

Life

“Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Way, Future

“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

People, Courage, For Bestfriend

“People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Source: Conversations with Saul Bellow

People, Idea, Nature

“We sleepwalk through our lives, because how could we live if we were always this awake?”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

“Keep time! How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”

William Shakespeare Richard II

Source: Richard II

Men, Music, Time

“If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Life

“I wouldn't waste a day, not an hour, not a moment. Take what you want and damn caution. Live, enjoy. Feed ravenously. Or the biggest regret you'll have at the end of your life is wasted time.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Genuine Lies

Life, Time

“Activism is the rent I pay for living on the planet.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

From the film poster for Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth.

“Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

“Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Life, Feeling, Time

“There are two stories for every life; the one you live & the one others tell”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Life

“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Books, Faith, Reading

“Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time

Knowledge, Universe

“I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Housing

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Variant: Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Source: Fire from Within

Men, Feeling, Thinking

“Live long and prosper”

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer

Source: Amok Time

“Every act I live while I am fully awake can not help but be both prayer and lovemaking.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Help

“One morning you wake up and are afraid you are going to live. In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Dead, Depressing

“I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Peeta Mellark to Katniss, p. 245
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

“The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.”

Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) American poet, translator

People, Truth, Beauty, Way

“Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End (1910), Ch. 22
Context: Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

Love, Passion

“Life is too short to be living somebody else's dream.”

Hugh Hefner (1926–2017) American businessman and magazine publisher

Life, Dreams

“I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Thinking, Drawing

“Hearts Live By Being Wounded”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Heart

“Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Remarks at the National Conference of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO (30 March 1981)) (source: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/33081b.htm) <br class="br">1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

People

“There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

“I don't live in France, I live in myself.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

“We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Widely attributed to Emerson on the internet, this actually originates with "What is Success?” http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/emerson/Ephemera/Success.html by Bessie Anderson Stanley in Heart Throbs Volume Two (1911) edited by Joseph Mitchell Chapple. <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, Children, People, World