Quotes about living
page 54

“…deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It’s something you have to have before you die in order to have lived.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

People, Knowledge, Future

“She [Melanie] is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Dreams, Reality

“But chance runs like a river through all our lives, and being prepared for surprise is the best we can do.”

Kenneth Oppel Skybreaker

Source: Skybreaker

Chance

“And as you walk yr road, as you live yr life, RELISH THE ROAD. And relish the fact that the road of yr life will probably be a windy road.”

Suzan-Lori Parks (1963) American writer

Life

“it’s not conditions but decisions that determine our lives.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom

Decision

“We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“Faith is the courage to live your life as if everything that happens does so for your highest good and learning. Like it or not.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior

Life, Faith, Courage, Learning

“Vampires bore a grudge longer than any technically living creatures, and whenever they were in a bad temper, they expressed themselves through murder.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“I'm not going anywhere without you. We're swimming to China together. And if the worst happens, I'm dying with you before I'm living without you.”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

“They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Change

“One must not live one's life through men but must be complete on oneself as a woman of substance.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Life, Men

“twice I have lived forever in a smile”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Smile

“I don’t want you to think I got through this undamaged, okay? But I’m learning to live with it. Because otherwise, the damage is all you are.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Thinking, Learning

“Live and learn and pass it on.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Learning

“Max-Dogs, dogs, go away, let me live another day.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Dogs

“I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

Love, Learning

“Living is about clucking your tongue and enjoying the sound.
~Slater”

Ted Dekker book Three

Source: Thr3e

“Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

Soul, Sun, Childhood

“Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

“the price of creation
is never
too high.

the price of living
with other people
always
is.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

People

“Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Fools, Thinking, Fight

“We no longer live life. We consume it.”

Vicki Robin (1945) American writer

Life, Wise, Life

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

Life, Truth, Wise, Life

“My art and profession is to live.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 6
Essais (1595), Book II
Variant: My trade and my art is living.

Art

“He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Truth, Learning

“Isn't there something in living dangerously?”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“This is the extent of his knowledge of the sea: it was very big, it was salty, and fish lived there.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Knowledge, Fish, Sea

“Dying seems less sad than having lived too little.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Sadness

“The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

God, Soul, Heartbreaking

“As he drank, little brown drops of coffee clung to his mustache like dew. Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 5, p. 78 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

Men, Coffee

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster. To pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question.

“They can pump whatever they want into my arm, but it takes more than that to keep a person going once she's lost the will to live.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss, p. 389
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Personality

“A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Life, God, Marriage, Nature

“When you know that everything matters—that every move counts as much as any other—you will begin living a life of permanent purpose.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Life

“Dude, the bush is ready. Why you still beating around it?”
“I’ve lived a long time, kid, and I’ve never heard anyone mutilate the English language quite like you.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Time

“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Pain

“We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Feeling, Home

“Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

Beauty

“I love the people,' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, People

“Some kisses are worth living for”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Kiss

“We could do it, you know."
"What?"
"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

Reality

“If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

People, Boy, Fight, Country

“Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Reality

“The heart may freeze, or it can burn. The pain will ease and I can learn. There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as, my last.”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Source: Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical

Pain, Learning, Past, Future

“there are robots among us. There are also Magicians among us. I think we take turns playing each role, as a matter of fact. The Magician defines a reality-mesh and the robot lives in it. Grok?”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Thinking, Reality

“It is on a day like this one,
a little later a little earlier
that you descover without surprise
that something is wrong
that you don't know how to live
and you will never know”

Georges Perec book A Man Asleep

Source: Un homme qui dort

“I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.”

Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) American translator

Source: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

Life, God, Business

“He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.”

Jennifer Donnelly (1963) American writer

Source: The Winter Rose

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”
Vita enim mortuorum in memoria vivorum est posita.

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

Philippica IX, 5.
Source: Philippicae – Philippics (44 BC)

Life, Memory, Dead

“I want to live happily in a world I don't understand.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 4
Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

World, Understanding

“Live by your own rules Move to your rhythm, instead of dancing to the beat of someone else’s drum Decide how you want to be treated Choose what you will or will not tolerate Leave if you don’t get what you want.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Dance

“When they die no one will ever know that once they lived.”

Sidney Sheldon book The Other Side of Me

Source: The Other Side of Me

“The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Men, Lie, Beauty, Dead

“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Men, Reading, Victory

“If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.”

Dave Ramsey (1960) American financial advisor

“Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

Life

“My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Source: Experience: A Memoir

Life

“I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man / just a mortal with potential of a superman / I'm living on.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Source: The Songs Of David Bowie

Age

“This Forest eats itself and lives forever.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them…”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

People

“I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Context: An experiment about your next vacation will allow you to observe your attitude to your experiencing self: At the end of the vacation, all pictures and videos will be destroyed. Furthermore, you will swallow a potion that will wipe out all your memories of the vacation. How would this affect your vacation plans? How much would you be willing to pay for it, relative to a normally memorable vacation? My impression is that the elimination of memories greatly reduces the value of the experience.Imagine a painful operation during which you will scream in pain and beg the surgeon to stop. However, you are promised an amnesia-inducing drug that will wipe out any memory of the episode. Here again, my observation is that most people are remarkably indifferent to the pains of their experiencing self. Some say they don’t care at all. Others share my feeling, which is that I feel pity for my suffering self but not more than I would feel for a stranger in pain.I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

“Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Autumn, Decision