Quotes about living
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“It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town… he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Motivational

“Cowards are nice, they're interesting, they're gentle, they wouldn't think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They're very brave.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Madness in the Family (1988)
Source: Madness in the Family: Stories

People, Thinking

“It’s absolutely stupid that we live without an ozone layer. We have men, we’ve got rockets, we’ve got saran wrap – FIX IT!!!”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Men, Stupidity

“To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox?”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Change, Perfection

“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.”

Elizabeth Drew (1935) American journalist

Literature, Reading

“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.”

Michael Landon Jr. (1964) American television director

Life

“Live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life, Truth, Justice

“I'm afraid to live and afraid to die.”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Go Ask Alice

“The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

“I know you guys are living out your own private Romeo and Juliet love story, but remember: Both of them die in Act V.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Ruthless

Love, Guy

“To learn and think; to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Understanding, Thinking, Learning

“My patients taught me not how to die, but how to live.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

“Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Context: There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

Life, Understanding, Success

“May you live in such a way that your death is just the beginning of your life.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make A Difference

Life, Death, Way

“We rehearse for the big death through the little death of orgasm, through erotic living. Death as transfiguration”

Peter Redgrove (1932–2003) English writer

Death

“Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

“Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.”

Dean Koontz book One Door Away from Heaven

Geneva Davis; chapter 1, p. 8
Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001)
Context: Change isn't easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Life, Way, Thinking, Change

“We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Forgiveness

“Once a person knows a kiss and a kind word, you can't blame him for never wanting to live without them again.”

Robert James Waller (1939–2017) American writer

Kiss, Personality

“What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling

“Time is not the great teacher. Experience is. A man may live a whole life, but if he never leaves his home to experience that life, he dies knowing nothing. A mere child who has suffered and lived can be the wiser of the two.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: Love Bites

Life, Home, Suffering, Teachers

“If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

People, Idea

“By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Truth, Universe

“I wish to live for myself. I should never want to be trapped.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.”

Gail Sheehy (1937) writer, biographer

Change

“We can control our lives by controling our perceptions.”

Bruce H. Lipton (1944) US biologist

“The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, & which life reveals is the most living proof of our immortality.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Life

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

“Why is it always the world? Why is it never just half a block? Or Jersey? You know, something we could live without?”

Rob Thurman (1950) American writer

Source: Roadkill

World

“They say the world is a stage. But obviously the play is unrehearsed and everybody is ad-libbing his lines."
"Maybe that’s why it’s hard to tell if we’re living in a tragedy or a farce."
"We need more special effects and dance numbers.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

There's Treasure Everywhere

World, Dance

“Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.”

John Hersey book Hiroshima

Source: Hiroshima

Life, Money

“I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986

Heart

“I was learning that if I lived slightly in the future-what will happen next-I didn't have to feel so much about what was going on in the present.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Feeling, Learning, Future

“Living Memory
I carry you with me into the world,
into the smell of rain
& the words that dance between people
& for me, it will always be this way,
walking in the light,
remembering being alive together”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

People, World, Way, Light

“That's the thing about being the product of happily marries parents, You grow up thinking the fairy tale is real, and more than that, you think you're entitled to live it. So far, though, it wasn't working out as planned.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Thinking, Parent

“There is no man living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Thinking

“I can tell you that the end of life is the some of the love that was lived in it.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love, Life

“You'll be old and you never lived, and you kind of feel silly to lie down and die and to never have lived, to have been a job chaser and never have lived.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Lie, Feeling

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

“We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

World

“How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Source: Black Coffee Blues

Lie, Memory, Time, Heart

“If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, "I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas."
"That is because you have no brains" answered the girl. "No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home."
The Scarecrow sighed.
"Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains."

People, Beauty

“I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Death, Music, Time

“Were-Hunters are different from humans. (Ravyn)
You mean other than the fact that you live for several hundred years, can turn into animals, time travel, and wave your hand to make freaky stuff happen? (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Travel, Time, Animals

“This was what people fought wars over, she thought, and killed each other over, and destroyed their lives for: this nerve-shredding mixture of longing and pleasure.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

War, People, Pleasure

“Life is about coming to terms with the mistakes made. Learning to live with them even when they cut soul deep.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Silence

Life, Soul, Learning

“There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.”

Wallace Stegner book Crossing to Safety

Source: Crossing to Safety

Friendship, Happiness, Home, Time

“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Love, God, Time

“If you're asking me if I like your company, the answer is yes. If, on the other hand, you're asking me if I could live without you, the answer is also yes.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: A Quick Bite

Birthday, Country, Birthday

“… show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they're going to be okay.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

People, Fight

“Worry about staying alive first. Then worry about how you're going to live.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

“That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

“Every man dies. Not every man lives.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Life, Business, For Men

“I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Blood of Others

Source: The Blood of Others

Imagination, Thinking

“We make choices everyday, some of them good, some of them bad. And - if we are strong enough - we live with the consequences.”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Strong

“people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.”

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

People

“The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

Life, People, Way, Nature

“Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.”

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

Life

“Some must be warriors, that others may live in peace.”

Mercedes Lackey book Exile's Honor

Source: Exile's Honor

Peace

“To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Deutsches Requiem

"Deutsches Requiem" as translated by Julian Palley (1958)

Religion

“We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

Books, World

“You don't know how to live until you learn how to die.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Learning

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Water

“A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

The Expanding Universe (1963)
Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Life, Books, Star, Universe

“In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Beauty

“When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish… Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Way, Thinking

“It's a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

People, Thinking

“Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?'
'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

Life, People, Support

“When you have children, you're obligated to live.”

Anne Tyler book Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Source: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Children

“hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home," I say. "Katniss, I live three houses away from you," he says.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Home, Housing

“Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Life, Time

“So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Truth (1896)

Nature

“Action alone is the tinder which ignites the map, the parchment, this scroll, my dreams, my plans, my goals, into a living force.”

Og Mandino book The Greatest Salesman in the World

Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 16 : The Scroll Marked IX, p. 93.
Context: I will act now. Never has there been a map, however carefully executed to detail and scale, which carried its owner over even one inch of ground. Never has there been a parchment of law, however fair, which prevented one crime. Never has there been a scroll, even such as the one I hold, which earned so much as a penny or produced a single word of acclamation. Action alone is the tinder which ignites the map, the parchment, this scroll, my dreams, my plans, my goals, into a living force. Action is the food and drink which will nourish my success.
I will act now.

Dreams

“Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing - and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

Food, Clothes