Quotes about living
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“Maybe we shouldn't be living this way, without grass and trees, and ducks, always under pressure, always trying to catch up, never enough time or energy for the things we love, if we can even remember what those things are.”

Meg Rosoff (1956) American-British children's writer

Source: Jonathan Unleashed

Love, Way, Tree, Grass

“What we live by we die by.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“I’d chosen the regret I could live with best, that’s all.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Invention of Wings

“Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can
inhabit”

Rafael Sabatini (1875–1950) Italian writer

Soul, Hell

“It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.”

John Steinbeck book The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Source: The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Love

“In Seattle we live among the trees and the waterways, and we feel we are rocked gently in the cradle of life. Our winters are not cold and our summers are not hot and we congratulate ourselves for choosing such a spectacular place to rest our heads.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Life, Feeling, Tree, Winter

“Fortitude…. It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

“The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Life, Way

“Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

World

“To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

World, Color

“I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived.”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

Books

“All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.”

Aleksandar Hemon The Lazarus Project

Variant: All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.
Source: The Lazarus Project

People, World

“It’s hard to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Personality

“The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.”

Isabel Allende book City of the Beasts

Source: City of the Beasts

Feeling

“You must choose to live by enouragement rather than by expectations.”

Stephen Kendrick book The Love Dare

Source: The Love Dare

“He touched her face, gently, with the back of his hand. 'you disappear so completely into your head sometimes.' he said. 'i wish i could follow you.'
you do, she wanted to say, you live in my head all the time”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Time

“Out of the cacophony of random suffering and chaos that can mark human life, the life artist sees or creates a symphony of meaning and order. A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Life, Suffering, Dependency

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Wisdom, Music, Thinking

“Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

Love, Sleep

“Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.”

Hermann Broch (1886–1951) austrian writer

Parting, Sea

“Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Sadness, Sad

“Because tanning and steroids are only a problem if you plan to live a long time.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Problem, Time

“Sometimes I would open my eyes when we were kissing, I would watch him and I could see it. I could actually see LOVE - not words, not an emotion, not an abstract concept or a subjective state of mind, but a living, breathing thing.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Love, Kiss

“I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Thinking

“No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they?

No.

It's never like what you expected.

Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

Source: The Crossing

Life, People

“What you tend to find in the personal lives of brilliant men is devastation akin to a nuclear bomb going off.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Men, Personality

“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys.
Make your lives extraordinary”

Tom Schulman (1950) American film director, screenwriter

Boy, Graduation

“I'll never understand how a man can live his life
With his finger on the self-destruct button,
Holding it there day after day,
Blinded by an obsession to press it
But lacking the conviction to do even that.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Life, Understanding

“She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy.”

Justin Cronin The Passage

Source: The Passage

Thinking, Light

“The cruelest thing you can do to a person who's living in panic is to offer him or her hope that turns out false. When the crash comes its intolerable.”

Robert Ludlum book The Bourne Supremacy

Source: The Bourne Supremacy

Hope, Personality, Falseness

“The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know… Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Source: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

Love, Thinking, Reading

“Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.”

Barbara Bush (1925–2018) former First Lady of the United States

Variant: Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.

Sex, Forgetting

“Adventures are only interesting once you've lived to see the end of them. Before that, they are nothing but fear, and being too cold or too hot or too wet or too hungry, and getting hurt.”

Holly Lisle (1960) American writer

Source: The Silver Door

Fear, Hurt

“Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

People

“… just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives.”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Variant: It's pain that changes our lives.
Source: Shopgirl

Pain, Change

“It's not enough to be born free; I have to live my freedom!”

Esther M. Friesner (1951) American writer

Source: Sphinx's Princess

Freedom

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

“But the question that everyone wanted answered was whether I would have the nerve and the strength to start the whole process from scratch. I said yes; otherwise I would be someone who had no dream left, and without dreams I would not want to live.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Source: Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Dreams, Question

“Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Heart

“I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Love, Selfishness

“D'ye think I don't know?" he asked softly. "It's me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you-then I'm asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Feeling, Thinking, Tear, Heart

“we’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroy us”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

“I'm a reading addict. I can't live without it, like someone who is addicted to drugs.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Reading

“And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Variant: And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others.
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 25.

“The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.”

Shakti Gawain (1948–2018) Author

World, Light

“Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

Way

“Unless you're not pushing yourself, you're not living to the fullest. You can't be afraid to fail, but unless you fail, you haven't pushed hard enough.”

Dean Karnazes (1962) American distance runner

Source: 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days -- and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance!

“This problem - it is age old. To do what is right and save the day without destroying the very thing the day is lived for.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

Age, Problem

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

Reality

“What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Faith, Dogs, Question

“Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which we live, we should therefore be content.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Time, Past

“What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

People, Feeling, Understanding, Time

“I have lived one step away from losing my mind for years. I am quick and accurate in spotting unstable streaks in others.”

Charlaine Harris book Shakespeare's Landlord

Source: Shakespeare's Landlord

“Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Women

“No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Life, People, Time, Past

“you will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”

Henry Drummond (1851–1897) Scottish evangelist, writer and lecturer

Variant: You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments when you really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.

Love, Life, Wedding

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Variant: But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.
Source: Persuasion

Women, Hate, Water, For women

“If you keep pretending you're in that book, it will make you not want to live in the life you're in.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

Life, Books

“We live in all we seek.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: For the Time Being

“Life is too short, or too long, for me to allot myself the luxury of living it so badly.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Variant: Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.
Source: Eleven Minutes

Life

“Live to discover, as long as discovery leads to a love that comes from the Creator… writing was the mirror to life.”

Ted Dekker book Showdown

Source: Showdown

Love, Life

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.”

Annie Dillard book The Living

Source: The Living

Books, Reading

“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

Goodbye, Business, Graduation

“There was a man once who said that mothers carry the key of our souls with them all our lives. But you threw mine away”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Soul

“In this totally dark world, you can't live unless you're needed by someone.”

Hotaru Odagiri Japanese mangaka and illustrator

World

“Live your life and forget your age.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Variant: Live your life, not your age.

Life, Age, Forgetting

“If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life Study Guide

Life, God, Joy

“I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.”

Jonathan Ames (1964) American novelist, memoirist

Source: My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

Life, Hope

“Live one day at a time. Keep your attention in present time. Have no expectations. Make no judgements. And give up the need to know why things happen as they do. Give it up!”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Source: Why People Don't Heal and How They Can: A Practical Programme for Healing Body, Mind and Spirit

Time

“Be strong, live happy and love, but first of all
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep
His great command!”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

Love, Happiness, Strong

“It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.”

Aldous Huxley book The Perennial Philosophy

Source: The Perennial Philosophy

World

“If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Pain, Truth

“Live to please the others, and everyone will love you, except yourself.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love

“The dead always outnumber the living. These spirits have waited centuries, unable to express their anger. Now I have given them bodies of earth.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Waiting, Anger, Dead

“Sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, the living flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: The First Bad Man

Love, Sleep, Water

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16

People

“Do radioactive cats have eighteen half-lives?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Cats

“Result of self-consciousness: audience and actor are the same. I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own edification. I live my life but I don't live in it. The hoarding instinct in human relations.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Life

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstacies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Page 159
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Lovers, Nature, Solitude, Suffering

“The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Life, Happiness, Understanding

“When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Drink, Country

“Monsters,' her dad said, a tear tracing his cheek. 'I live in a world of monsters.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

World, Tear

“Dude, the place is filling up," I say. "It feels like we're living in the bottom half of an hourglass."
Like somehow we're running out of time.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Feeling, Time

“There's a difference between living and just surviving. Do something you love, and find someone to love who loves that you love what you do.
It is really that simple.
And that hard.”

John Connolly (1968) author

Source: The Infernals

Love

“They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Women, Men

“Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking. Loving might be a mistake. but its worth making”

Reba McEntire (1955) American country music artist and actress

Love, Chance

“To commit suicide is easy. To live without a god is more difficult. The drunkenness of triumph is greater than the drunkenness of sacrifice.”

Anaïs Nin book Incest: From a Journal of Love

Source: Incest: From a Journal of Love

God, Suicide

“I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.”

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

“I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.”

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

People, Books, World, Faith

“The wolf is living for the earth.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Wolf

“Hadn't one of my all-time favorite reveries been to become a cranky hermit, live unperturbed in my house, and have things brought to me like a monarch or tribal lord?”

Laurie Notaro American writer

Time, Housing

“Our finger prints don't fade from the lives we touch.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

“I could have. What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have heppened but, didn't. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Variant: At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but didn't. The magic moments
go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Change

“if you think of a relationship as a living entity, I guess it's one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a fingernail. But when it's the heart, that's a whole different ball of wax.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Thinking, Heart