Quotes about living
page 14

“Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes….”

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

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

For Father

“She felt… how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Life

“Lothaire is very much alive.”
“You swear?”
“Often. Though not as much as foul-mouthed Regin. I try not to in front of Bertil.” She petted the bat.
“I meant—will Lothaire live?”
“He will.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

“Wherever you turn, you can find someone who needs you. Even if it is a little thing, do something for which there is no pay but the privilege of doing it. Remember, you don't live in a world all of your own.”

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

World

“This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Chicago, IL http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (17 June 1912) <br class="br">1910s

Country

“You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.”

George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion

Source: Pygmalion

“Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Men, Forgetting

“I wish to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

As Quote Investigator explains, allegories about animals doing impossible things have been incredibly popular in the past century. But no, this one isn't from Einstein. (Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/.) <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Life, Stupidity, Fish, Tree

“I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Life, Happiness, World, Way

“Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.”

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

Source: On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

Forgetting

“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.”

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

Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 69

Shoe, Personality

“I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Love

“When in doubt, choose to live.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man

Life, Wise, Deep, Inspirational

“Atra esterni' ono thelduin
Mor' rana li'fa unin hjarta onr
Un du evari'nya ono varda

(May good fortune rule over you
peace live in your heart
may the stars watch over you)”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Source: Eragon & Eldest

Peace, Star, Heart

“I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in.”

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

World

“Real living is living for others.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

“If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her, she would infect to the north star!”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Star

“If you concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens… Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Life, Happiness, Star

“Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

Secret

“There's this man who lives in the sky, and he has ten things he doesn't want you to do, and you'll burn for a long time if you do them. But he loves you.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Love, Time

“That's not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people would lead better lives."

IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY PROBABLY WOULDN'T LIVE AT ALL.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

People, Thinking

“It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Life, Idea

“So wise so young, they say, do never live long.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

“A woman with romance in her life lived as grandly as a queen, because her heart was treasured.”

Nora Roberts book Bed of Roses

Source: Bed of Roses

Life, Heart

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

"Is Life Worth Living?"
Variant: Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
Source: 1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Life, Help, Inspirational, Depressing

“Girls, there are poets who learn from you
to say, what you, in your aloneness, are;
and they learn through you to live distantness,
as the evenings through the great stars
become accustomed to eternity.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book The Book of Images

Source: The Book of Images

Girl, Star, Learning, Distant

“We're both thieves, Harvey Swick. I take time. You take lives. But in the end we're the same: both Thieves of Always.”

Clive Barker book The Thief of Always

Source: The Thief of Always

Time

“If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Life, Sincerity

“I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Happiness, Way, Girl, Thinking

“He's just rather more lively than most fossils.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

Scientific American (1992), Vol. 267.

Knowledge, Sea

“The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.”

Joe Navarro (1953) Author, professional speaker, ex-FBI agent and supervisor

Source: What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People

People, Problem

“The idea is not to live forever, it is to create something that will.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Idea

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

Source: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

World, Thinking, Sea

“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life, Search

“Better to live Until You die.”

Dan Millman book Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

“I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy
Variant: While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Learning

“What a strange world we live in… Said Alice to the Queen of hearts”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

World, Heart

“only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Personality

“Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Food

“I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1972) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 5

Thinking, Decision, Learning

“The problem in my life and other people's lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Life, People, Problem

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Life, Way, Reality

“Any idiot can face a crisis—it’s day to day living that wears you out.”

Clifford Odets (1906–1963) Playwright, screenwriter, director, actor

“I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Source: Lettres à Génica Athanasiou

Pain, Angels, Hell, Understanding

“This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of others merely by getting a law passed.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

People, World, Law, Thinking

“Live dangerously.”

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

“The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Life, Feeling

“To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Joy

“For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

Life, World, Sense, Time

“Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Enough Rope

Pain, Law

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

“Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Wisdom, Age, Faith, Learning

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible (1953)
Context: Danforth: Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
Proctor: I mean to deny nothing!
Danforth: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let —
Proctor: [With the cry of his whole soul] Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

Life, Lie, Soul

“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love, Women, Men

“The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dunes these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

World, Nature, Water

“I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.”

Clarice Lispector book A Breath of Life

Source: A Breath of Life

Life, Death, Madness, Dead

“With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything…”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

Life, Sadness, Cry

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"Taming the Bicycle" (1917)

“Live in the Moment", "Empty Your Mind of the Trash"
Wisdom is the Use of Knowledge”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Wisdom, Knowledge

“To love is simply to allow another to be, live, grow, expand, become. An appreciation that demands and expects nothing in return.”

Kate Millett (1937–2017) American writer and activist

Source: Sita

Love

“When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Queen

Source: The Other Queen

Love, Death, Marriage, Fools

“A man who does not have something for which he is willing to die is not fit to live.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“My house completed, and tried and not found wanting by a first Cape Cod year, I went there to spend a fortnight in September. The fortnight ending, I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go. The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dunes these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

World, Beauty, Autumn, Nature

“Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.”

Saul Bellow book Ravelstein

Source: Ravelstein

Happiness, People, Books, Learning

“Death is a fiction created by people who live their lives in total unawareness. There is only life, life and life alone, moving from one dimension to another, another dimension to another.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Life and Death in One Breath

Life, Death, People

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. Be honest, but hate no one; overturn a man's wrongdoing, but do not overturn him unless it must be done in overturning the wrong. Stand with a man while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

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

The last sentence is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech, slightly paraphrased. No known contemporary source for the rest. It first appears, attributed to Lincoln, in US religious/inspirational journals in 1907-8, such as p123, Friends Intelligencer: a religious and family journal, Volume 65, Issue 8 (1908)
Misattributed

Hate, Parting

“Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Happiness, Mountain, Deep, Happy

“The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable, and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe.”

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

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 248

Life, Secret, Nature

“I dream for a living.”

Steven Spielberg (1946) American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur

Time (July 15, 1985)

Dreams

“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

People, Age, World, Fear

“Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that is was a living hell. It wasn't. But is sure as hell wasn't heaven, either.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Hell, Sense

“I don't do regrets. Regrets are pointless. It's too late for regrets. You've already done it, haven't you? You've lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

Life, Change

“It is better to live rich, than to die rich.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 17, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Death

“All our lives we sweat and save,
Building for a shallow grave.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

“God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

God

“What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath
such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Food

“But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Wisdom of the Heart

Life, God, World, Singing

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book Voices of the Night

St. 7.
A Psalm of Life (1839)
Source: Voices of the Night

Men, Time

“Hades was the personification of dark and dangerous--a living, breathing Batman.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Goddess of Spring

“How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry
the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Death, Cry

“Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Way

“A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies
that have moulded them”

Jawaharlal Nehru book The Discovery of India

Source: The Discovery of India

“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Death

“That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true…”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Men, War, Country

“The most interesting thing about artists is how they live”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Source: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp

“Ladies and gentlemen: War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”

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

Post-Presidency, Nobel lecture (2002)
Source: The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture

War, Children, Peace, Learning

“My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly!

You didn't know it then-you know it now.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Love, Life

“It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“I am living in the Google years, no question of that. And there are advantages to it. When you forget something, you can whip out your iPhone and go to Google. The Senior Moment has become the Google moment, and it has a much nicer, hipper, younger, more contemporary sound, doesn't it? By handling the obligations of the search mechanism, you almost prove you can keep up….

You can't retrieve you life (unless you're on Wikipedia, in which case you can retrieve an inaccurate version of it).”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections

Life, Search, Question, Forgetting

“‎All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Art, Life, Moving On

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

They Call Me Coach (1972)
Variant: You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you

Perfection

“Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there, when you're everywhere-come and get your share.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

John Lennon, in "Instant Karma!" (written 27 January 1970)
Lyrics
Context: Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Everyone you meet Why in the world are we here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on Earth are you there
When you're everywhere
Gonna get your share Well, we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah, we all shine on
C'mon and on and on, on, on

Pain, World, Fear

“WE live in this world when we love it.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

279
Stray Birds (1916)

Love, World, For Parents

Quotes about living page 14

Quotes about living
page 14