Quotes about living
page 52

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

People, Personality

“It is always better
to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.
For every one of us, living in this world
means waiting for our end. Let whoever can
win glory before death. When a warrior is gone,
that will be his best and only bulwark.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

Source: Beowulf

Death, World, Waiting

“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Life, Time

“Better to live one year as a tiger, than a hundred as sheep.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna: 50 Years Of Wit And Wisdom, The Insider http://www.theinsider.com/news/1130430_Madonna_50_Years_Of_Wit_And_Wisdom,

Good Night

“This is what being alive feels like, you know? The place doesn't matter. You just live.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Feeling

“Live the dream, Potato.”

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Dreams

“Be smart, be strong, be proud, live honorably and with dignity, and just hold on.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Variant: Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.
Source: A Million Little Pieces

Strong

“Goddamn it. You’ll never be without me. We’re going to grow old together. Die together. I’m not going to live a single day without you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Captivated by You

“Life is wasted on the living.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Life

“Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

“Live all you can — it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”

Henry James book The Ambassadors

Source: The Ambassadors (1903), book V, ch. II.
Context: Live all you can — it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?.. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that... The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.. Live!

Life

“Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon, attended by fifty naked women armed with poisoned spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin's service. All redheads.
-You're just making that up, Jean.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Women

“I LOVE living, I have some problems with my LIFE, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.”

Neil Simon (1927–2018) playwright, writer, academic

Love, Life, Problem

“To live at all is miracle enough.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Poem of the same title (also on Peake's tombstone)
Source: Collected Poems

“I can awaken things inside you that have been sleeping all your life. You're strong enough to live in the dark, to glory in it. You can become a queen of the shadows. Why not take that power, Elena? Let me help you take it.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Awakening / The Struggle

Life, Sleep, Strong, Help

“I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Fate, Future

“But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.”

Banana Yoshimoto book The Lake

Source: The Lake

Life

“Everyone lives bound by their own knowledge and awareness. They define that as reality; but knowledge and awareness are vage, and perhaps better called illusions.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Knowledge, Reality

“If tomorrow were never to come, it would not be worth living today.”

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

Source: On Humanism

“I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Time

“Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Nature

“You're gonna miss each and every shot you can't be bothered to take. That's not living life--that's just being a tourist. Take every shot, Kate. If it's worth caring about, no matter how impossible you think it is--you take the shot.”

Matt Fraction (1975) American comic book writer

Source: Hawkeye, Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon

Life, Thinking

“Memory is never pure. And recollection is always coloured by the life lived since”

Josephine Hart (1942–2011) Irish writer

Life, Memory

“It is because people live in the things they possess instead of in their relationship to God that God seems at times to be cruel.”

Grace Livingston Hill (1865–1947) 20th-century novelist

God, People, Time

“She liked things that had been written by people who had lived short, ugly, and tragic lives. Or, who at least, were English.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

People

“To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)? Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought…?”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

Love, Hope, Question

“We are frightfully concerned with our own deaths, sometimes so much so that we forget the real purpose of our lives”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives

Death, Forgetting

“It's your time to live, don't mess it up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Time

“So you interrupted my date to make fun of me for still living with my parents. Couldn't you have done that on a night I didn't have a date? That's most nights, in case you're curious.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Parent, Night

“Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like… you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.”

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

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Thinking

“He insisted that stars were people so well loved, they were traced in constellations, to live forever”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Love, People, Star

“Rats live on no evil star”

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

Star, Evil

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
Context: In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

Death, Pleasure, World

“He gets hurt by the smallest touch. It'll be okay, as long as there will finally be a day. Eventually, one day. It will be good if all our burdens would finally be released. I really hope you can do it. I hope you two can both live happily.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Hope, Hurt

“How you start your day is how you live your day. How you live your day is how you live your life.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Source: Heal Your Body A-Z

Life

“to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one’s departure from this world.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

World, Departure

“If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Life, Men, God

“The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Life, People

“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15
Context: Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

Way, Study, Learning

“Do you know what courage is? I guess you don't. Do you know that the courage it took at that moment - to actually blow yourself away - was more than enough courage to keep on living?”

Sharon M. Draper book Tears of a Tiger

Source: Tears of a Tiger

Courage

“I loved you because there was no other place for me to go. We were married because we did not know what else to do with each other. You never knew me, nothing about me, what died inside me, what lived invisibly.”

Aleksandar Hemon The Lazarus Project

Source: The Lazarus Project

Love

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

People, Books, Imagination, Reading

“Nothing is forever, but there's a continuing stream of people who go through our lives and continue with us… Nothing just stops and stays… But it flows on… Like a river…”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

People

“Simon sighed. "People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but It's the way you live your life that matters.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but its the way you live your life that matters.
Source: City of Glass

Life, People, Way

“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

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

Journals IV A 164 (1843)
See Phenomenology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, by Dermot Moran (2002)
Variants:
We live forward, but we understand backward.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Life, Forgetting

“I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Way, Feeling, Time, Help

“When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn’t that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Love, Thinking

“I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.”

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

1960s, Cobo Center speech (1963)

“We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Love, Pleasure, Learning, Sea

“I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Hurt, Hurtful

“To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever.”

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

Love

“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”

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

March, 1933 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ps_DtS_PFb4C&q=%22I+postpone+death+by+living+by+suffering+by+error+by+risking+by+giving+by+losing%22&pg=PT203#v=onepage <br class="br">Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Error, Suffering

“There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Espresso Tales

Source: Espresso Tales

Women

“I think fantasy is best described as a kind of fiction that evokes wonder, mystery or magic, a sense of possibility beyond the ordinary world in which we live, and yet which reflects and comments upon that known world.”

Kate Forsyth (1966) Australian writer

World, Thinking, Sense

“Don’t push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county’d be easier to live with.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Speed

“Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

"Stairway to Heaven," Thinking in Pictures (1995), p. 202.
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Context: Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.

Death, People, Birth, Nature

“How does he do it? Live. With the fear of death every day. I don't fear death as much as I fear the thought of living.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Death, Fear

“A girl calls and asks, "Does it hurt very much to die?"
"Well, sweetheart," I tell her, "yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Girl, Hurt

“Rhage nodded. “The place is also big enough. We could all live there without killing each other.”
“That depends more on your mouth than any floor plan,” Phury said with a grin.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Variant: The place is also big enough. We could all live there without killing each other." -Rhage
"That depends more on your mouth than any floorplan." -Phury
Source: Dark Lover

Dependency

“Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

People

“It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

As quoted in "Nearly 100, LSD's Father Ponders his 'Problem Child." (7 January 2006)
Context: It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. … In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans … The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature.

Nature

“In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Life, Way

“‎"Does all the beauty of the world stop when you die?"

"No," said the Old Oak; "it will last much longer - longer than I can even think of."

"Well, then," said the little May-fly, "we have the same time to live; only we reckon differently.”

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

Source: The Complete Fairy Tales

World, Beauty, Thinking, Time

“She intended to swallow the world and he lived crushed by reality.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Source: Island Beneath the Sea

World, Reality

“Sometimes we have to kill a little so we can live.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

“To be in your children's memories tomorrow,
You have to be in their lives today.”

Barbara Johnson (1947–2009) American literary critic

Children, Memory, For Parents

“Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Source: Second Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow

Life, Game, Victory

“Another werewolf thing. Like most animals, we spent a large part of our lives engaged in the three Fs of basic survival. Feeding, fighting and… reproduction.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Animals, Fight, Parting

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

“I want to live like music sounds."- Ruth”

Eva Ibbotson book The Morning Gift

Source: The Morning Gift

Music

“Vivo sin vivir en mí… muero porque no muero. (I live without really being alive… I die because I am not dying.)”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

“The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Pain, People, Fear, Time

“Yep," said Arthur. Somehowseemed the most positive thing he could say. Stronger thanand more heroic than. He hoped he could live up to it.”

Garth Nix book Drowned Wednesday

Source: Drowned Wednesday

Hope

“The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.”

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

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Men, World, Christ

“I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Dreams

“When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Dead

“Most men lead lives of quiet aspiration.”

Robert Sheckley book Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?

Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?

Men

“Without his mate to share his life, he was but a screen for events and circumstances to pass through. He was npt even empty, for he was no vessel to hold even the thinnest of air.
He lived, though was not truly alive”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Life

“We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews
Context: For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Death, War, Drink, Beer

“A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.”

Laura Gilpin (1891–1979) Photographer

Parting