Quotes about living

page 13

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

“We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder.”

“Love can really screw you up before you figure out how to live with it. And once you do? You wonder how the hell you ever lived without it”

“If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived. (The Inconvenient Messiah, BYU Speeches, Feb 15, 1982)”

“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

“I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked.”

“Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.”

“A visiting pastor at our church in Plains once told a story about a priest from New Orleans. Father Flanagan’s parish lay in the central part of the city, close to many taverns. One night he was walking down the street and saw a drunk thrown out of a pub. The man landed in the gutter, and Father Flanagan quickly recognized him as one of his parishioners, a fellow named Mike. Father Flanagan shook the dazed man and said, “Mike!” Mike opened his eyes and Father Flanagan said, “You’re in trouble. If there is anything I can do for you, please tell me what it is.ℍ “Well, Father,” Mike replied, “I hope you’ll pray for me.” “Yes,” the priest answered, “I’ll pray for you right now.” He knelt down in the gutter and prayed, “Father, please have mercy on this drunken man.ℍ At this, a startled Mike woke up fully and said, “Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.ℍ Sometimes we don’t feel much of a personal relationship between God and ourselves, as though we have a secret life full of failures and sins that God knows nothing about. We want to involve God only when we plan to give thanks or when we’re in trouble and need help. But the rest of our lives, we’d rather keep to ourselves.”

“Humanity lives in its fiction.”

“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men.”

“Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.”

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

“Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.”

“Man lives in greatest pain”

“I saw all races, all colors, blue eyed blonds to black skinned Africans in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one! Worshiping as one! No segregationists, no liberals; they would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those words”

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

“Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.”

“And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be
living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got
you invited to the very best social occasions.”

“You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face.”

“There is a curse.
They say:
May you live in interesting times.”

“I understand pain. I've lived with pain my entire life. But pain is nothing compared to betrayal. And betrayal is nothing compared to knowing that the javelin in your back was rammed there by the one person in your life you actually trusted.”

“Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.”

“What's the point of living if you're going to hate the world? Guard your heart if you have to, but don't shut it away.”

“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.”

“You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you.”

“Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.”

“If you believe that life is worth living then your belief will create the fact.”

“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.”

“Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.”

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”

“So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“Everyone must work to live, but the purpose of life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others. Only then have we ourselves become true human beings.”

“There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.”

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”

“We can know what love is. It´s adults who have forgotten, so they cling to their poor substitute and yell at kids who dare to live with real love. Pure Love. Love without compromise or distraction.”

“Always live your life with your biography in mind.”

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”

“I lived in countries that had no democracy… so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom.”

“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”

“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair… the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”

“You have to live with the people to know their needs, and you have to live with God to know how to solve them.”

“Whatever your income, always live below your means.”

“Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.”

“Don't sign your name
between worlds,

surmount
the manifold of meanings,

trust the tearstain,
learn to live.”

“I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”

“Live or die, but don't poison everything.”

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”

“Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it.”

“Remember, young man, experience is not the best teacher. Other people's experience is the best teacher. By reading about the lives of great people, you can unlock the secrets to what made them great.”

“Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you're going to live your life.”

“We live and learn, or, perhaps more importantly we learn and live.”

“I could never be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

“Live long and prosper!”

“Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?”

“Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.”

“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

“I wishcould manage to be glad!" the Queen said. "Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!”

“Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation”

“Live, and be happy, and make others so.”

“The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.”

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”

“I want to infect you with the tremendous excitement of living, because I believe that you have the strength to bear it.”

“I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.”

“I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.”

“when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.”

“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”

“You can come share a tasty meal of bread, raisins, and fresh cheese. With that, andanyone can live to a hundred.”

“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”

“Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable just to be able to go on living.”

“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”

“The fear is simply because you are not living with life, You are living in your mind.”

“For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.”

“Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.”

“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.”

“Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.”

“I repeat with the most vehement conviction: truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. Today is only the beginning, for it is only today that the positions have become clear: on one side, those who are guilty, who do not want the light to shine forth, on the other, those who seek justice and who will give their lives to attain it. I said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.”

“Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.”

“My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.”

“The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way in the world.”

“Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives
must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.”

“I believe in reincarnation,” [Bjorn] said.
I KNOW.
“I tried to live a good life. Does that help?”
THAT’S NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE… SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION… YOU’LL BE BJORN AGAIN.”

“I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure.
I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.”

“We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.”

“Be of good courage all is before you, and time passed in the difficult is never lost… What is required of us is that we live the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.”

“I’d a million times rather live and risk and have it all end badly than stay in the box I’ve been in for the past two years.”

“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”

“Why am I fighting to live,
If I am just living to fight
Why am I trying to see.
When there aint nothing in sight
Why am I trying to give,
When no one gives me a try
Why am I dying to live,
If I am just living to die?”

“They can tak' oour lives but they canna tak' oour troousers!”

“people who have failed in their lives, they are suffering their failure. People who have succeeded in their life, they are suffering their success.”

“She lives the poetry she cannot write.”

“How was I able to live alone before, my little everything? Without you I lack self-confidence, passion for work, and enjoyment of life--in short, without you, my life is no life.

[Written to his wife, Mileva]”

“What have I always believed?
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.”

“Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.”

“A life lived in fear… is a life half-lived.”