Quotes about living
page 2

“Life is suffering, and suffering can make you resentful, murderous, and then genocidal, if you take it far enough. So you need an antidote to suffering. And maybe you think that you can build walls of luxury around yourself, and that that will protect you from the suffering. Good luck with that. That isn't going to work. Maybe you think that you could build a delusion and live inside that. Well, that's going to fall apart. What is there, then, that's going to help you fight against suffering? That's easy: It's the Truth. The Truth is the antidote to suffering. The reason for that is because the Truth puts reality behind you, so that you can face the reality that's coming straight at you without becoming weak and degenerating and becoming resentful and wishing for the destruction of Being, because that's the final Hell. The final Hell is your soul wishing for the destruction of everything, because it's too painful, and you're too bitter. And that happens to people all the time.”

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

Other

Life, Pain, People, Truth

“Men characterize pornography as something mental because their minds, their thoughts, their dreams, their fantasies, are more real to them than women's bodies or lives; in fact, men have used their social power to characterize a $10-billion-a-year trade in women as fantasy.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Women, Men, Dreams

“I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.”

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

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Idea, Suicide

“People who allow others not of their race to live among them will perish, because the inevitable result of a racial integration is racial inter-breeding which destroys the characteristics and existence of a race. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide, particularly for a People like the White race, who are now a small minority in the world.”

David Lane (white nationalist) book 88 Precepts

page ?
88 Precepts

People, World

“Life isn't about how popular you are… What girl or boy you are dating or who you know.Life is about always being true to who you are or what you believe in. Never let anyone convince you that their way is better than your way. In the end all we have is our hearts… and our minds. This is the reason we sing… this is the reason we cry… this is why we live.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Life, Way, Girl, Boy

“Such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives… What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted by Else Gebel, in letter to Robert Scholl (November, 1946). Original German text. http://www.mythoselser.de/texts/scholl-gebel.htm

Death

“Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Life, Happiness, Night

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Selfishness

“We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. 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 splendor and travail of the earth.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Context: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved 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.

Life, Fate, World, Sense

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

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

In answer to a question asked by the editors of Youth, a journal of Young Israel of Williamsburg, NY. Quoted in the New York Times, June 20, 1932, pg. 17 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40617F83B5A13738DDDA90A94DE405B828FF1D3 Unsourced variant: Only a life in the service of others is worth living. 1930s Variant: I believe in one thing—that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.

Life, Wise, Life

“forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! control the present! Live supremely well now! This is the way of the wise…”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Way, Past, Future, Forgetting

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Art, Music, Way

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
… live in the question.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Question, Heart, Patience

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

Heart, For Father

“Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.”

Annie Ernaux (1940) French writer

Source: Quoted in Melodrama after the tears, ed. Jörg Metelmann and Scott Loren (Amsterdam University Press, 2016), p. 178

Life, People, Intelligence, Universe

“Live in the moment. Moments make history.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, And Life Through The Distorted Lens Of Nikki Sixx

History

“So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry”

Jack Kerouac book Desolation Angels

Variant: Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
Source: Desolation Angels

Travel

“We can't stop living because other people are dead.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

People, Dead

“Our lives are like the wind… or like sounds.

We come into being, resonate with each other…

Then fade away”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

People, Fear, Dreams, Sleep

“The function of a child is to live his/her own life, not the life that his/her anxious parents think he/she should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educators who thinks they knows best”

A.S. Neill (1883–1973) Scottish educator and theorist

Life, Education, Thinking, Parent

“A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.”

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

Variant: If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Dead

“To live is to love, to love is to live.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Love, Wise, Deep, Attitude

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

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

Source: I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

Deep, Inspirational, Life, Peaceful

“If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I’m not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I’ve got.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Death, Happiness, Peace, Hope

“Live, love, laugh, leave a legacy.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Love

“Words suck. I mean, every thing has been said. I can't remember the last real interesting conversation I've had in a long time. Words aren't as important as the energy derived from music, especially live.”

Kurt Cobain book Journals

Source: Journals

Music, Time

“Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”

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

Life, Wisdom, Knowledge, Help

“Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

Life, Business, Forgetting

“Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Life, Children, Education, Art

“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

World, Art, Perfection

“There are three persons living in each of us: the one we think we are, the one other people think we are, and the one God knows we are.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

Source: Why Revival Tarries

God, People, Thinking, Personality

“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”

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

“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.”

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

Source: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

Love

“Life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, so let's all get wasted and have the time of our lives.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Life, Time

“I know we don't have any guarantee that we're gonna live tomorrow. That's why I live everyday as it was my last.”

Melanie Thornton (1967–2001) singer

One of her last interviews before her death in a plane crash on November 24, 2001.
Attributed

“We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?”

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

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Death

“The Rock: I am married to savannah mullins; I need to take this moment, and I need to tell you something as Dwayne. It's been a long time since I've been back. Seven years to be exact; but I want to take this moment, in the middle of this ring, to tell you why I'm back. It's not because of the money. It's not to promote a movie. I am back in the middle of this ring because of you. When I left - when I left the WWE seven years ago I dreamed big, and you guys dreamed big with me. You helped me accomplish my goals - accomplish my dreams - because you never. left. my side; and I wanna take this moment to tell you all here - you're live here - millions watching around the world. I wanna tell you thank you. I love you, and it is because of you that I am back in this ring, and it is because of you - and I give you my word - I am never ever going away. Simply put, ladies and gentlemen, The Rock is back!”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

The Rock's return to WWE Raw as host of WrestleMania XXVII (14 February, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ejiG5-BtA&feature=related.

Love, Money, World, Dreams

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Death, Money, People

“I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me. I want to stay hopeful, even though I get scared about why we’re even alive at all.”

Lana Del Rey (1985) American singer-songwriter

Daily Mail (25 January 2012)

Love, Life, People, Hope

“Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the Creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation. The Creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing — until there is only … the dance.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

"The Dance" - from inlay sleeve of Dangerous (1991)

World, Star, Lovers, Joy

“If there is something which I am proud, in this country, it is that there is no living soul more honest than me. Not even in the Federal Police, not even in the Public Ministry, not even in the Catholic Church, not even in the evangelical church. There may be just as equal, but I doubt it.”

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945) Brazilian politician, 35th president of Brazil

Testimony to the Federal Police regarding the "Lava-jato Operation" investigation. ‘Não tem uma viva alma mais honesta do que eu’, afirma Lula http://politica.estadao.com.br/blogs/fausto-macedo/nao-tem-uma-viva-alma-mais-honesta-do-que-eu-afirma-lula/ at estadao.com.br 01.20.2016

Soul, Country

“Like the old Indian proverb says, do not judge a man until you've walked 2 moons in his moccasins.
Most people don't know me, that is why they write such things in which most is not true. I cry very very often because it hurts and I worry about the children, all my children all over the world, I live for them.
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he could prove, history could not be written.
Animals strike not from malice but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood not our pain. But still I must achieve I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world for the children.
But have mercy, for I've been bleeding a long time now. MJ.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Handwritten note published in People (12 October 1987)

Pain, Children, People, Truth

“The worker in a capitalist state—and that is his deepest misfortune—is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932).Translated as “Those Damned Nazis: Why a Workers Party? “Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We a Workers’ Party?” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932) 1930s

Understanding, Sense

“Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, plows and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialised task will do it best.”

Xenophon book Cyropaedia

Cyropaedia, 4th Century BC

Women, Men, Food, Shoe

“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

No findable citation to Socrates. Found ascribed to Socrates in Stephen Covey (1992), Principle Centered Leadership (1990) p. 51 https://books.google.com/books?id=w4zCIPZrniQC&pg=PA51&dq=%22be+what+we+pretend+to+be%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyvZnCg5HKAhUU5mMKHQIIAIgQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22be%20what%20we%20pretend%20to%20be%22&f=false. Misattributed

World, Way

“Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

This is usually attributed to Emiliano Zapata, but sometimes to Aeschylus, who is credited with expressing similar sentiments in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life".
Misattributed

“Live your life, listen to your music way to loud, be crazy and as different as you want to be and always remember you are not alone.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Life, Music, Way

“Persevere in prayer without ceasing.. to understand and live according to his will, not to change it.”

Charbel Makhlouf (1828–1898) Lebanese Maronite monk and saint

Love is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of Saint Charbel (2019)

Understanding, Change, Perseverance

“People are strange, they neither wish to live nor die.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

“Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It’s a strange feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either hate them or love them, but that’s not how people are.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 267
Born a Crime

Love, Hate, Bad luck, People

“Every entrepreneur is either a socialist, anarchist, or a communist. Meaning, you are not willing to depend upon an individual who tells you what to do and how to live your life. Your boss represent the capitalist regime.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Dependency

“God is the CEO of our lives. Therefore, Adam and Eve were the first people to be fired from heaven.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, People

“Self-realization is realizing the truth that was already there when you were still unaware of it. Self-help means regaining your full freedom and living according to your desires.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Truth, Freedom, Help

“You can't expect to rule anyone with the memorised laws inside your head, but you must adapt your attitude according to the time in which you are currently living in.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Law, Time

“Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black… But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

The Tampa Tribune (1 April 1980)

Sport

“But to live outside the law, you must be honest.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Absolutely Sweet Marie
Variant: But to live outside the law, you must be honest.
Source: da Absolutely Sweet Marie, n.° 11

Law

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part One, Ch. 1
On the Road (1957)
Context: They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

People, Star, Time, Madness

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Variant: Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward.

Life, Wise, Deep, Life

“The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Art, Sense, Light, Learning

“Me only have one ambition, y'know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together - black, white, Chinese, everyone - that's all.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“Many people say, "Well, I'd love to make a decision like that, but I'm not sure how I could change my life." They're paralyzed by the fear that they don't know exactly how to turn their dreams
into reality. And as a result, they never make the decisions that could make their lives into the masterpieces they deserve to be. I'm here to tell you that it's not important initially to know how
you're going to create a result. What's important is to decide you will find a way, no matter what.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Love, Life, People, Fear

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

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“Born to lose. Live to win.”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

Source: Motorhead: In the Studio

“We are born to live, we are born to understand, we are born to carry a cursed pattern and be transformed by pain.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Pain, Understanding

“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Health, Religion, Justice, Knowledge

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

The joke about immortality also appears in On Being Funny (1975)
In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine from April 9, 1987, Allen said "Someone once asked me if my dream was to live on in the hearts of people, and I said I would prefer to live on in my apartment."
Source: The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader (1993)

Heart, Funny

“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Life, People, Waiting

“to live means to lack something at every moment”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”

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

Family, Parent

“Too weird to live, too rare to die!”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby”

George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion

Source: Pygmalion

Happiness, Motivational, Deep, Happy

“The purpose of life…is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

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

Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)

Life, Fear, Wise, Deep

“We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Life, Truth, Problem

“The richest and fullest lives attempt to achieve an inner balance between three realms: work, love and play.”

Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994) American German-born psychoanalyst & essayist

Love

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

Variant: 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.
Source: The Call of Cthulhu

Sea

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced
life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything

Love, Life, Parting, Cute

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Death, Fear

“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.”

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

Source: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

Life, Imagination, Thinking, Motivational

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Foreword
An Autobiography (1977)

Despair

“People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose: I was chosen to be a dancer, and, with that, you live all your life.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

I Am A Dancer (1952)
Source: Blood Memory

Life, People

“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it's dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Law, Dreams, Nature, Learning

“We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”

Carlos Castaneda book Journey to Ixtlan

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe, (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)

“My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn’t live much longer.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore

God, Intelligence

“Hating people isn’t a productive way of living. So what’s the point in hating anyone? There’s enough hate in the world as it is, without me adding to it.”

Ozzy Osbourne book I Am Ozzy

Source: I Am Ozzy

Hate, People, World, Way

“However life treats you, as time goes by you always get the feeling you've lost life in the very living of it.”

Miguel ángel Asturias book Men of Maize

Source: Men of Maize

Life, Feeling, Time

“I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes and dream!”

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) Finnish children's writer and illustrator

Source: Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 1

Peace, Dreams

“When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.”

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

Life, Smile, Cry

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Death

“Live each moment completely and the future will take care of itself. Fully enjoy the wonder and beauty of each moment.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Beauty, Future

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Love, Life, World, Time

“Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Love, Music, Star, Silence

“Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958), edited by Thomas H. Johnson, associate editor Theodora Ward. Quoted in "The Conscious Self in Emily Dickinson's Poetry" by Charles A. Anderson: American Literature, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Nov. 1959), pp. 290-308.

Time

“in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Dreams, Time, Forgetting

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Way, Thinking

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

6.4311
Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Variant: Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

Life, Death, Way

“I'd like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the world owes them a living.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

People, World, Education, Thinking

“I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Cats

Quotes about living page 2

Quotes about living
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