Quotes about living
page 34

“I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Love, Pain, Friendship, Hell

“It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.”

Jean Webster book Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

Books

“At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Life, Pleasure

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Spring, Strong, Memory, Past

“What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: A Step of Faith

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give,
To roam the roads of lands remote,
To travel is to live.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Source: The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography

Travel, Flying

“The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Question

“I think you can do whatever you want. In the end, we all live the life we choose for ourselves.”

Nicholas Sparks book See Me

Source: See Me

Life, Thinking

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

“The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Happiness, World

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 339

“I lived too much in my head instead of the real world.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Sweethearts

World

“So Aphrodite married Hephaestus and the celebrity ship Aphrophaestus completely dominated Olympian tabloid news for like a thousand years. Did they live happily ever after? HAHAHAHAHA. No.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

“It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.”

Naomi Shihab Nye (1952) American writer

Source: I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven

World

“To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Change

“Listen,' Clover said. 'Don't worry about not being able to come back, I've lived both places, and trust me, you won't be getting the short end of the stick if you end up in Foo. I mean, candy alone…”

Obert Skye (1970) American writer

“Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known… then went crazy as a loon."

Lisa Simpson”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

World, Beauty, Solitude, Hurt

“Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Source: The Complete Fairy Tales

Flowers, Freedom

“Live a good long life. Grow old and die after I do. And if you can, die laughing.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Life

“If you want to live where people are not afraid of mice, you must give up living in palaces.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

People

“Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.”

Haruki Murakami book Hear the Wind Sing

Variant: All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives.
Source: Hear the Wind Sing

Way

“Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.”

John Scalzi book Old Man's War

Source: Old Man's War

People, Peace, Way

“A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.”

Jane Smiley (1949) American novelist

Source: 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Life, Reading

“Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

Way, Suffering

“If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Feeling, Thinking

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”

Josh Waitzkin (1976) Chess player

Source: The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

Learning

“The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Life, Perfection

“It is only when we stand up, with all our failings and sufferings, and try to support others rather than withdraw into ourselves, that we can fully live the life of community.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Community And Growth

Life, Communication, Support, Suffering

“It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life, Thinking

“Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Money, Learning

“Find your soul and you'll live. Lose your soul and you'll die.”

Frank Delaney (1942–2017) Irish writer and journalist

Shannon

Soul

“Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world.
But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Pain, Happiness, World, Universe

“Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Friendship

“Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 99, “By the Military Cemetery: Missing Persons” (p. 664)
Context: “It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” my darling whispered to me. “People go at the oddest times and from the oddest causes.”
“Soldiers live,” I muttered.
“You’re turning that into a mantra.”
“You feel guilty. You wonder why him and not me, then you’re glad it was him and not you, then you feel guilty. Soldiers live. And wonder why.”

Feeling

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”

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

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)
Context: I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments. But if we will go on with the faith that nonviolence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, we will be able to change all of these conditions. And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.

Peace

“She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from
scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who
have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve
our goals.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

People, Learning, Success

“Roark smiled, "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Life, Smile

“As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

World, Suffering

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods

Grass

“In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

“Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

"Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
Source: Advertisements for Myself

“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Life, Way

“Living was a dangerous past-time, and often quite painful—but there was also such joy in living, such beauty, things that one would otherwise never see, never experience, never know. The risk of pain and loss was a part of living.”

Jim Butcher Captain's Fury

Source: Captain's Fury

Pain, Beauty, Loss, Time

“Okay, now you're starting to scare me," Wes says.
"No, scary is the way people can alter their voices on cue. Like your imitation of that creepy guy who lives at your house."
"You mean my dad?" he laughs.”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

Source: Deadly Little Lies

People, Way, Guy, Housing

“Try to live so that you can always tell the truth.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Truth

“But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

World

“And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace,
To live on still in love, and yet in vain”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Love

“We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.”

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

Fools

“I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life.”

Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) German film director, photographer, actress and dancer

Life, Feeling, Heart

“The woman will sit eternally in the tall black armchair. I will be the one woman you will never have… excessive living weighs down the imagination: we will not live, we will only write and talk to swell the sails.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Imagination

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Love, Happiness, Travel, Gratitude

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"To You on Your First Birthday"
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)
Context: The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Personality

“[Percy] kept hoping things would get better for Annabeth and him, but their lives just got more dangerous, as if the Three Fates were up there spinning their futures with barbed wire instead of thread just to see how much two demigods could tolerate.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Fate, Hope, Future

“The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Life, Problem

“Some people never find it
Some only pretend
But I just want to live
Happily ever after, now and then”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

People

“There comes a precious moment in all of our lives when we are tapped on the shoulder and offered the opportunity to do something very special that is unique to us and our abilities, what a tragedy it would be if we are not ready or willing.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Books, Art, Way, Personality

“It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Variant: Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting
Context: In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting [C'est dans la connaissance des conditions authentiques de notre vie qu'il nous faut puiser la force de vivre et des raisons d'agir].

Knowledge, Drawing

“A woman who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people’s evaluations. But no one can adapt perfectly to public opinion. And herein lies the source of their destruction.”

Natsuo Kirino book Grotesque

Source: Grotesque

People

“There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. 1, ch. 2
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Life, Women, Dreams, Music

“I'm worried he's going to… do something crazy."
"He lives in a hole in the ground, dresses funny, and occasionally eats his assistants," Eve said. "Define crazy.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

“He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

People

“For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Waiting

“Death is not such a bad thing. What would be a bad thing would be living without challenges. Without knowing defeat, we cannot know what victory is. There is no life without death.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Life, Death, Victory

“My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice… If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Very Good, Jeeves

Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

Home

“To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I'd never seen anything like them. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

People, Animals

“There is an odd synchronicity in the way parallel lives veer to touch one another, change direction, and then come close again and again until they connect and hold for whatever it was that fate intended to happen.”

Ann Rule (1931–2015) True crime writer

Fate, Way, Change

“Running is about finding your inner peace, and so is a life well lived.”

Dean Karnazes (1962) American distance runner

Life, Peace

“My heart is too thoroughly dried to be broken in a hurry, and I mean to live as long as I can.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Heart

“No matter how bad things get, you've got to go on living, even if it kills you.”

Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) Yiddish author and playwright

“The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom

Rebellious. Living.
Against the Elemental Crush.
A Song of Color
Blooming
For Deserving Eyes.
Blooming Gloriously
For its Self.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Color, Flowers, Nature

“I think the only answer is to live life to the fullest while you can and collect memories like fools collect money. Because in the end, that's all you have - happy memories.”

Sarah Strohmeyer (1950) American writer

Source: Kindred Spirits

Life, Money, Happiness, Fools

“It’s what we chase but never find. It is the mystery of our lives, the understanding that even when we have everything we want it is one day to leave us. It’s the something unseen, the lurking devastation, the darkness that gives our lives dimension.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Understanding

“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Age, Learning, Despair

“A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives…”

Jonathan Kozol (1936) American activist and educator

Source: Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

People, Dreams

“Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel.
"You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know," Haymitch says.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Feeling, Strong

“I have three rules to live by: Get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin, and when all else fails, run like hell.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Source: Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews

Hell, Drink

“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love (1920), Ch. 15

Life

“We live and breathe words.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“It had been so long since she had seen him and she had lived on memories until they were worn thin.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Memory

“Stuff your eyes with wonder... live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

World, Dreams, Dead

“I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.”

Greg Iles book The Quiet Game

Source: The Quiet Game

Happiness

“His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, “for what?”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Source: Shopgirl

Age, World, Question

“If a life can be ruined in a single moment, a moment of betrayal, or violence, or ill luck, then why can a life not also be saved, be worth living, be made, by just a few pure moments of perfection?”

Marcus Sedgwick (1968) British writer and illustrator

Source: Midwinterblood

Life, Betrayal, Perfection

“It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.”

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

May 3, 1845
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

“He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Life, Sadness, Way

“Most men judge your importance in their lives by how much you can hurt them.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: My Story

Men, Hurt, Hurtful

“Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed

People, Way

“Shh,” he whispered. “You asked me if I loved you. I do. I love you more than life itself. Nothing matters in this world but that you live. Can you do that for me? Can you live?”

Elizabeth Hoyt (1970) American writer

Source: To Desire a Devil

Love, Life, World

“bringing up children was]like living with a bunch of drunks… you really have to be on your toes all the time.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Children, Time

“For what it's worth: it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you find you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over again.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Life, Hope

“So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

People

“Women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Women

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

People, Dreams, Time

“Anyone can live in a house, but homes are created with patience, time and love.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: The Beach House

Love, Home, Time, Housing

“As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.”

Homér Iliad

VI. 146–149 (tr. R. Lattimore); Glaucus to Diomed.
Alexander Pope's translation:
: Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those are past away.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Iliad

Men, Spring, Season

“I know a girl made of memories and phrases, lives her whole life in chapters and phases…”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Life, Girl, Memory

Quotes about living page 34

Quotes about living
page 34