Quotes about living page 35

“So live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts”

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

The origin of this quote is often misattributed to Cicero; however, it is from Line 135-136 of Book 2, Satire 2 by Horace, "Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus." The English translation that most closely matches the one misrepresented as Cicero's is from a collection of Horace's prose written by E. C. Wickham, "So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts."
Misattributed

Men, Heart

“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

World, Reality

“Any life worth living is going to have risks”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

“Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Variant: All would live long, but none would be old.
Source: Gulliver's Travels

“There is the sudden. There is the eventual.
And in between, there is the living.

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. WE make more than dust.

That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“Mahoney: You have to live.
Mr. Magorium: Darlin'… I have.”

Suzanne Weyn book Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Source: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

“Men are always ready to die for us, but not to make our lives worth having. Cheap sentiment and bad logic.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Men

“We live in a world with so many dangers that we have to be careful whom we trust.”

Anthony Horowitz book Raven's Gate

Source: Raven's Gate

World

“Maybe they didn't make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn't want to live forever.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, from Yosemite Valley (7 October 1874); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 11: On Widening Currents 1870s Source: Wilderness Essays

People, Nature

“It’s said that the biggest determinant of our lives is whether we see the world as welcoming or hostile. Each becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Hostility, World

“Phury nodded. "And if she lives with us, we get to keep the cat.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Cats

“That Jem makes beautiful things and I destroy them. That it really ought to be me dying and not him. I mean, what's the point of living if you can't even enjoy it? Yet Jem enjoys all the life he's got. It's not fair.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Life, Beauty

“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.”

Brennan Manning book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 11 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)

Life, God, Light, Learning

“Would you not like to try all sorts of lives — one is so very small — but that is the satisfaction of writing — one can impersonate so many people.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Letter to Sylvia Payne (24 April 1906), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1984-1996), vol. I

“Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Bait, stanza 1

Love, Pleasure, For Him, For Boyfriend

“For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

Source: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World

Time, Forgetting

“*Oh, I know I could say were through
And tell myself I'm over you
But even if I made a vow
I promise not to miss you now
And try to hide the truth inside
I fell cause I, I just can't live a lie”

Carrie Underwood (1983) American country music singer

Truth, Lie

“Life is like that. You live it forward but understand it backward.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Variant: You live it forward, but understand it backward.
Source: Cutting for Stone

Life, Understanding

“If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

Departure, Tree

“How we live our lives does not, unfortunately depend on us alone. Circumstances, good or bad, constantly intervene. A person close to us die. A person not so close to us carries on living. All these things affect how we live.”

Tariq Ali (1943) British Pakistani writer, journalist, and historian

Source: The Stone Woman

Dependency, Personality

“Don't wait for it," I said. "Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. Create. And then the love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.”

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

Source: The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1 1931-1934: Vol. 1

Love, Books, World, Waiting

“"You disappear so completely into your head sometimes. I wish I could follow you."
You do. You live in my head all the time.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Jace and Clary, pg. 354
Variant: You disappear so completely into your head sometimes," he said. "I wish I could follow you.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Time

“Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Pain, Truth, Sadness, Feeling

“Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.”

James Thurber book The 13 Clocks

Source: The 13 Clocks

Angels, Time

“He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild (1903)

Hostility, Strong

“We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

“It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.”

Daniel H. Wilson book Robopocalypse

Source: Robopocalypse

Peace

“One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"Du Rêve" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)

Dreams

“I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living”

Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990) Cuban poet/novelist/playwright

Life, Way

“I'd killed him in the end, but revenge only makes things all better in the movies. In real life, once the villain is dead the trauma lives on inside the victims.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Life, Revenge, Dead

“White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul
You live again in time, slender and silent.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Soul, Bee, Time

“A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

"The Cage" (Star Trek first pilot), spoken by John Hoyt as "Dr. Philip Boyce" (0:06:18) Cited in: Dubes 52, Surviving Katrina Before and After https://books.google.nl/books?id=wyySAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA35&dq=%22A+man+either+lives+life+as+it+happens+to+him,+meets+it+head-on+and+licks+it,+or+he+turns+his+back+on+it+and+starts+to+wither+away%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsleOa8aHLAhUFIQ8KHdVnClIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22A%20man%20either%20lives%20life%20as%20it%20happens%20to%20him%2C%20meets%20it%20head-on%20and%20licks%20it%2C%20or%20he%20turns%20his%20back%20on%20it%20and%20starts%20to%20wither%20away%22&f=false, 2014, p. 35

“Maybe we've lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we've found each other… I know I've spent each life before this one searching for you. Not someone like you but you, for your soul and mine must always come together.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Life, Soul, Search

“We live in a culture where everything tastes good but nothing satisfies.”

Daniel Pinchbeck (1966) American author and journalist

“Nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere.

(No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.)”

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

Source: On Old Age, On Friendship & On Divination

“The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Dentist
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Life, Lie, Secret, Art

“And suddenly she knew exactly why Catherine had fallen in love with him. It wasn't that he was unusually attractive, or ambitious, or even charming. He was partly those things, but more important, he seemed to live life on his own terms.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, Life

“Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Simply Perfect

Decision

“I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

If 6 Was 9
Song lyrics, Axis: Bold as Love (1967)
Source: Jimi Hendrix - Axis: Bold as Love

Life, Way, Time

“I live on the Jellicoe Road. Where trees make canopies over-head and where you can sit at the top of them and see forever.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Tree

“Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”

Sena Jeter Naslund (1942) American writer

Source: Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

Time

“If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: Thoughts in Solitude

Soul, Heart

“I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Source: Girlfriend in a Coma

Life, Youth, Feeling, Time

“Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?”

John Irving book The Hotel New Hampshire

Source: The Hotel New Hampshire

Strong, Learning

“What's the point of not taking chances? I don't know if I could stand living my whole life afraid.”

Ilsa J. Bick (1957) American writer

Source: Drowning Instinct

Life, Chance

“Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life…”

Elizabeth Goudge book Green Dolphin Street

Source: Green Dolphin Street

Life, Bird, Tree, Time

“Brigid O'Shaughnessy: “I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know.”
Sam Spade “You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

Source: The Maltese Falcon

“When it becomes really impossible to get away and sleep, then the will to live evaporates of its own accord.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Sleep

“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Feeling, Time

“That, to me, is the quintessential experience of living in the United States: constantly worrying whether or not the country is about to fall apart.”

Sarah Vowell book Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

Source: Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

Country

“The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after”

Lois Lowry book Number the Stars

Source: Number the Stars

World, Change

“Someday, I'd like to live a life based on doing good stuff instead of just not doing bad stuff.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

“The feel of them (books) and the smell of them. A bookshop was like an Aladdin's cave for me. Entire worlds and lives can be found just behind that glossy cover. All you had to do was look." Claire (Watermelon)”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Watermelon

Books, World, Feeling

“Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Variant: Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance
Source: One Day

Love, Passion, Chance

“Saying that you love is easy, but living up to those simple words is the most difficult thing you'll ever do.”

Kay Hooper (1957) American writer

Source: What Dreams May Come

Love

“I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“[Books] were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually living in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Books, World

“We live as we dream--alone….”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Dreams

“I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

“So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you're wondering whether you'll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him. There are safer ways to live than by being a Christian.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Hate, World, Way, Courage

“And all people live, not by reason of any care they have for themselves, but by the love for them that is in other people.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, People

“How are you? How is your wonderful bathroom? How are the books you read and the things you think? Your dogs and their lives? The weather? Your feelings?”

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

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Books, Dogs, Feeling, Thinking

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Wide hats and narrow minds" https://books.google.com/books?id=-lWtVSZoqWkC&pg=PA776 New Scientist 8 March 1979, p. 777. Reprinted in The Panda's Thumb, p. 151 https://books.google.com/books?id=z0XY7Rg_lOwC&pg=PA151. Source: The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

“Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Children, World

“I hate news and information and anything that threatens to puncture the bubble of oblivion in which I live.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: Magical Thinking: True Stories

Hate

“I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Game, Appearance

“… what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.”

Richard Brautigan The Tokyo-Montana Express

Source: The Tokyo-Montana Express

People, Heart, Housing

“I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sleep

“There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

God

“Living with kids is like living in a frat house… everything's broken, nobody sleeps, and there's alot of throwing up”

Ray Romano (1957) American stand-up comedian

on Everybody Loves Raymond

Sleep, Housing

“I know that happy things and fun things eventually come to an end. But things that are scary and sad come to an end too… they always do. Even if you can't always believe that, please don't give up. Live.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 21

Happiness, Sadness

“Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

“As far as I’m concerned, high school sucked when I went, and probably sucks now. I tend to regard people who remember it as the best four years of their lives with caution and a degree of pity.”

Stephen King book Guns

Source: Guns

People, School

“The only thing I’m afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn’t be worth living in.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Personality, Country

“If you live today, you breath in nihilism… it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”

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

Fight

“The truth was obscure,
Too profound and too pure,
To live it you had to explode”

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

Truth

“You don't get it, Clary. You don't understand what it's like to live always at war, to grow up with battle and sacrifice. I guess it's not your fault. It's just how you were brought up”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

War, Understanding

“Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don't know it and feel safe.”

Primo Levi book The Periodic Table

Source: The Periodic Table

Feeling, Mountain

“People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Children, People, World, Understanding

“My father had a theory that poor people are the best drivers because they can’t afford to carry car insurance and have to drive like they live, defensively.”

Paul Beatty book The Sellout

Source: The Sellout

People, Cars

“The scar will remain, but it is better for a man to lose both arms than his soul; and these hard years, instead of being lost, may be made the most precious of your lives, if they teach you to rule yourselves.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Soul

“For if you feel for me as i do for you - then I am asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Feeling, Tear, Heart

“Looks like I’m going to ruin your day, Big Boy. I choose to live my crappy life a little longer. (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Life, Boy

“We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Intelligence, Nature

“This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Children, Age

“The dead live."
"How do they live?"
"By love.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Love, Dead

“There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Life, Question, Universe, Forgetting

“Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Tea, Country

“It was hard to live normally when you were constantly pretending you didn't see what was going on in front of your face.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Country

“Let's look on the bright side: we're having an adventure, Fezzik, and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride