Quotes about living
page 51

“I understood finally that the thing I
should have feared most was not loss, but
never loving. The price for safety was the regret
I felt at this moment. And yet I would
have to live with it for the rest of my life”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Love, Life, Fear, Loss

“Men. You can't live with them… and you can't legally shoot them. I tossed out my husband eight years ago and got a llama instead. Best decision I ever made.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Men, Decision

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Past

“live your life as if you may lose everything.”

Mary Higgins Clark book All Through the Night

Source: All Through the Night

Life

“Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 45, “Interlude—Some Tavern Tale” (p. 333)

Lying

“Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes.”

Natalie Babbitt book Tuck Everlasting

Source: Tuck Everlasting

Life

“I wanted to live among books.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: A History of Reading

Books

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. vii (opening words).

“Life was good, one had only to live it.”

Jorge Amado (1912–2001) Brazilian writer

Source: Gabriela, Clavo y Canela

Life

“I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be a truth that others can accept, but I cannot live any other way. How would it be to live a lie every minute of your life.”

Alison Goodman (1966) Australian science-fiction writer

Source: Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

Life, Truth, Lie, Way

“People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don't. There's no one who knows except the person who carts it around her own self.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

People, Thinking, Personality

“… there are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armor, and you are safe - but bored. Or you can care greatly, live greatly, until life breaks you on its wheel.”

Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879–1958) American author and social activist

Life, Way, Indifference

“It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness

Feeling, Thinking

“If you stop eating donutes you will live 3 years longer. It's just 3 more years that you want a donut. <. )
<.”

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

“Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Death, People

“Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Death, Time

“You are a cynical man, Mr. Pleasant."
"We live in cynical times, Miss Cain.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

Time

“Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

World

“You should know I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say the best revenge is living well. I say it’s acid in the face—who will love them now?”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Love, Revenge

“The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Source: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks

Life, Beauty, Way

“memories should be sharp when one has nothing else to live for”

Zelda Fitzgerald book Save Me the Waltz

Source: Save Me the Waltz

Memory

“Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don't they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadows are always longer.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Source: I Sing the Body Electric! & Other Stories

Men

“A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: Ideology: An Introduction

People

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”

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

Fear

“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.”

Vicki Robin (1945) American writer

Source: Your Money or Your Life

“God wants us to live consistently, He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Happiness, Dead

“Who wills, Can.
Who tries, Does.
Who loves, Lives.”

Anne McCaffrey (1926–2011) American-Irish novelist

Source: "Dragonrider", published in Analog (January 1968), p. 148; also in Dragonsong, (1976) Ch. 7, p. 89

Love

“It is better to live ready than to get ready!”

Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist

“We live and we die and anything else is just a delusion.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

“I’m the god of funerals. I know every death custom in the world—how to die properly, how to prepare the body and soul for the afterlife. I live for death.”
“You must be fun at parties,” I said.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Death, God, World, Soul

“Before she became the Girl from Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years-she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.”

Justin Cronin The Passage

Source: The Passage Trilogy, The Passage (2010)

Girl

“After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and to just stop the machine of 'thinking' and 'enjoying' what they call 'living,' I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds…”

Jack Kerouac book Lonesome Traveler

Variant: I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of ‘thinking’ and ‘enjoying’ what they call ‘living’, I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.
Source: Lonesome Traveler

Lie, Thinking, Solitude, Grass

“The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Death, Night

“The bathroom mirror has not budged, the woman who lives there can tell the truth from the stuff they say and looks me in the eye- says do you prefer the easy way? No? Well ok then, dont cry.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Truth, Way, Cry

“I don't really need a job or extra money. After Rose and I get married, the kids and I'll just live off of her guardian paycheck.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Money

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. … I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.”

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

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life, Music, Thinking, Joy

“Life isn't worth living if you're scared all the time.
-Jordan”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Burned

Life, Time

“A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.”

Chaim Potok book My Name Is Asher Lev

Source: My Name Is Asher Lev

Life

“I lived for those moments when we were together, those few times in my life that I actually felt alive.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Source: Keys to the Repository

Life, Time

“Run faster, jump higher, reach farther, and you'll always win!

live life expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and living for the future!

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

Life, Hope, Future

“But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Way

“I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women (1978)
Context: I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.

Personality

“Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.”

Elizabeth Kolbert (1961) journalist and author

Source: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Imagination, Nature, Time

“We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living.”

John Updike Brazil

Source: Brazil

Love, Death, Fate, Fear

“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

Freedom

“Besides, life isn't meant to be safe. It's only in our mistakes, our errors, and our faults that we grow and truly live.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Life, Error

“Live your life the way you want. You'll figure it out.”

John Grisham (1955) American lawyer, politician, and author

Life, Way

“Think! There's nothing certain in our future! All we can hope for is a vague continuation. But in spite of that, you're going to keep on living. You can't give up on life just because it's vague. It's a question of possibilities…”

Kōji Suzuki book Ring

Source: Ring

Life, Hope, Question, Thinking

“Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

“live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested… Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1980s, Generation of Swine (1988)
Context: Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested...
Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

Love, Drink, Sleep, Time

“The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Parting, Dead

“Do certain events in our lives leave a permanent mark, freezing a piece of us in time, and that becomes a touchstone that we measure the rest of our lives against?”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Time

“Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: The Collected Dorothy Parker

“Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark.”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

God, Light, Night

“A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as a grounds for regret but as a living challenge.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe, (1998), Quotations from "Tales of Power" (Chapter 10)

“People living in the vanity of their own mind not only destroy themselves, but far too often, they bring destruction to others around them.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

People

“It's not enough to believe! Don't you see that, you stupid girl? You could spend your whole life hoping and believing! If a love affair is one-sided, then it's only ever a question, never an answer. You can't live your life waiting for an answer.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Love, Life, Stupidity, Hope

“Stop thinking about life and choose to live it”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Life, Thinking

“The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's not getting over that.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

People, Help, Heart

“The world has been abnormal for so long that we've forgotten what it's like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Source: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

World, Peace, Home, Heart

“… One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Variant: One thing yo learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.
Source: Unwind

People, Light, Learning

“my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Sleep, Heartbreaking, Moving On

“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique
Context: Sexual anxiety is caused by the external frustration of instinctual gratification and is internally anchored by the fear of the dammed-up sexual excitation. This leads to orgasm anxiety, which is the ego's fear of the over-powering excitation of the genital system due to its estrangement from the experience of pleasure. Orgasm anxiety constitutes the core of the universal, biologically anchored pleasure anxiety. It is usually expressed as a general anxiety about every form of vegetative sensation and excitation, or the perception of such excitation and sensations. The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.

Life, Pleasure, Fear

“Remember when i slept with my head
in a puddle at your feet?
It was humility, or atonement.
later your ankle was a pillow and
finally you pulled me up and in my sleep i
placed your hand above my heart,
like i forgot i didn't live there
anymore”

Michelle Tea (1971) American writer

Sleep, Heart

“We can't live without eating, but we don't live to eat.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

“You'll see, you'll come to understand. These big things, these terrible things, are not the important ones. If they were, how could one go on living? No, it is the small, little things that make up a day, that bring fullness and happiness to a life.”

Benedict Freedman book Mrs. Mike

Source: Mrs. Mike

Life, Happiness, Understanding

“Cast me into a dungeon;, burn me at the state, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives -- but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Men, God, Happiness

“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

October 26, 1769, p. 174
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson

Time

“The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.”

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

Life, Truth, Personality

“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Art, Painting

“The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison, was the miracle.”

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

Dreams

“Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Star

“I didn't think I should die but I did not know how I would Live.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Lost Duke of Wyndham

Thinking

“In this place of light: he dares to live
Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings
Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Bird, Light

“I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Men, Beauty, Feeling

“One day, she’d find a way to live her life to the fullest. She was sure of it. She just had no idea how she would manage it.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Life, Way, Idea

“Though life has to be lived forward, it can only be understood backwards”

Adeline Yen Mah (1937) Author and physician

Source: Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

Life

“So long as my body lives, and yours -- we are one flesh," he whispered, "And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire -- I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Hope, Soul, Parting

“The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.”

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

Truth, Idea, Understanding

“Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Help

“I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: The Signature of All Things

“Because if you stay true to yourself and live your life boldly, someday you might be able to meet someone who will want to eat takoyaki with you more than anyone else.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 8

Life

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

“I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Question

“I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

World

“There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Life, Imagination

“You asked me how old I am. I was born roughly nine centuries ago. I’ve lived for more than three hundred thousand days. And you made this one my favorite one of all."
-Uilleam MacRieve ~”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: MacRieve

“A human’s love. I couldn’t wish anything better for him. Animals protect what they know. They protect what they are bound to, but humans…humans have a greater capacity for sacrifice for those who live in their hearts. (Aristotle)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Love, Heart, Animals

“Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th Century invention and I don't want one. You don’t need to worry about me; I have a college education. I’m not destitute. I'm living like this by choice.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Education, Thinking

“I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Variant: I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free...

Life, People, Thinking, Hurt

“We are all life trying to live, among other life trying to live.”

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

Life

“To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Love

“That's how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni book Sister of My Heart

Source: Sister of My Heart

Happiness, Heart

“Because photos are testimony that someone did live. A reminder of past we may have loved or hated. A piece of our lives.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

Love, Hate, Photo, Past

“Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Life, Death, Memory

“You must admit I have a right to live in a pigsty if I want.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

“Now we're in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated. But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss and Plutarch Heavensbee (p. 379)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: “Are you preparing for another war, Plutarch?” I ask.
“Oh, not now. Now we’re in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated,” he says. “But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.”
“What?” I ask.
“The time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race. Think about that.“

Stupidity, Thinking, Memory

“You don't even live once.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Quotes about living page 51

Quotes about living
page 51