“She was one if the few souls that made me wonder what's it to live.”
Markus Zusak book The Book Thief
Source: The Book Thief
Quotes about living page 58
“Nobody wants to live with a person who'll never be happy.”
François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness
Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness
John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet
Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
“I want to live but I want to die. What do I do?”
Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story
Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story
“Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old.”
Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
“I've lived my life again just telling it to you.”
Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha
Source: Memoirs of a Geisha
“The dead see what they believe they will see. So do the living. That is the secret.”
Rick Riordan book The House of Hades
Source: The House of Hades
“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.”
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)
“I don’t know what it means to live.”
Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore
Source: Kafka on the Shore
“We live, we die, we are remembered, we are forgotten.”
Julian Barnes (1946) English writer
Source: Nothing to Be Frightened Of
“The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.”
Tanith Lee book Death’s Master
Source: Death's Master
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer
Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.
Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer
"The Myths by Which We Live", in The Rotarian, Vol. 107, No. 3 (September 1965), p. 55
Variant: The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.
“Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud.”
Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship
“Living well is the best revenge.”
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Bringing Science Down to Earth (1994), co-authored with Anne Kalosh, in Hemispheres (October 1994), p. 99 http://books.google.com/books?id=gJ1rDj2nR3EC&lpg=PA99&pg=PA99; this is similar to statements either mentioned in earlier interviews or published later in the book The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995) <br class="br">Variants: <br class="br">We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. <br class="br"> "Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) http://www.csicop.org/si/show/why_we_need_to_understand_science <br class="br">Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world. <br class="br"> "With Science on Our Side" https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1994/01/09/with-science-on-our-side/9e5d2141-9d53-4b4b-aa0f-7a6a0faff845/, Washington Post (9 January 1994) <br class="br">We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it? <br class="br"> Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553, May 27, 1996. <br class="br">I know that science and technology are not just cornucopias pouring good deeds out into the world. Scientists not only conceived nuclear weapons; they also took political leaders by the lapels, arguing that their nation — whichever it happened to be — had to have one first. … There’s a reason people are nervous about science and technology.<br>And so the image of the mad scientist haunts our world—from Dr. Faust to Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strangelove to the white-coated loonies of Saturday morning children’s television. (All this doesn’t inspire budding scientists.) But there’s no way back. We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged. Rather, its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility — more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive. <br class="br">"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) <br class="br">Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science. <br class="br">"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) <br class="br">Science is [...] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along. <br class="br"> Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553 (27 May 1996)
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist
Source: You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment
Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer
It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=IiKY1H0A_QEC&pg=PT102 (Hyperion, 2005). <br class="br">Cf. Wisdom from It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=EEiqMIgAl3UC&pg=PA49 (White Plains, N. Y.: Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 2007), p. 49.
Jean Ferris (1939–2015) American children's writer
Source: Twice Upon a Marigold
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
A variant — "Professor Einstein, the learned scientist, once calculated that if all bees disappeared off the earth, four years later all humans would also have disappeared" — appears in The Irish Beekeeper, v.19-20, 1965-66, p74, citing Abeilles et Fleurs (Bees and Flowers, the house magazine of Union Nationale de l'Apiculture Française) for June 1965. Snopes.com mentions its use in a beekeepers' protest in 1994 in Europe http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp suggesting invention and attribution to Einstein for political reasons. <br class="br">Misattributed
“we have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood”
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
“I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.”
Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged
Source: Atlas Shrugged
“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”
Franz Kafka book The Trial
Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 10
Context: Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice.
John Fowles book The Collector
Source: The Collector
“The best way to die is when your living”
Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer
“There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice
Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last
“We mortal millions live alone.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools
“We born dyin'… But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah.”
Walter Mosley (1952) American writer
Source: The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
“We should keep the dead before our eyes, and honor them as though still living”
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
“All human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.”
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman
“Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.”
Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat
“But for I am a woman should I therefore live that I should not tell you the goodness of God?”
Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love
Source: Revelations of Divine Love
“I am an old man who will live until I die," Anselmo said.”
Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls
Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls
“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
“We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist
Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir
“If you're not busy living, you're dying.”
Vince Flynn (1966–2013) American writer of fiction
Source: American Assassin
“Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.”
Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy
"Conflict in Vietnam and at Home" speech http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/filmmore/ps_ksu.html at Kansas State University on March 18, 1968 as part of the Alfred M. Landon Lectures on Public Issues.
“One must eat to live, and not live to eat.”
Il faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger.
L'Avare (1668), Act III, sc. i.
Firstly, an inaccurate sourcing: in Act III, yes—but in Scene I, no: rather, in Scene V—HARPAGON, VALÈRE, MASTER JACQUES (see, e.g., the Project Gutenberg HTML version of the English translation: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6923/6923-h/6923-h.htm). Secondly, a misattribution made clear by the Molière text—the character in the play, VAL, obviously points out that the quote refers to a "saying of one of the ancients" (and the quote is precisely written in quotation marks as well), in the full line of dialogue below:
Know, Master Jacques, you and people like you, that a table overloaded with eatables is a real cut-throat; that, to be the true friends of those we invite, frugality should reign throughout the repast we give, and that according to the saying of one of the ancients, "We must eat to live, and not live to eat."
The "ancients" to which VAL/Molière refers is Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, and the oldest known attribution, Socrates (whom Laertius explicitly attributes—and Cicero presumably invokes). Various books of quotations document this—e.g., Elizabeth Knowles' 2006 The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (http://books.google.com/books?id=r2KIvsLi-2kC&dq=%22one+must+eat+to+live+not+live+to+eat%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) and Jennifer Speake's 1982 A Dictionary of Proverbs (http://books.google.com/books?id=-IpkOkM3IfEC&dq=%22one+must+eat+to+live+not+live+to+eat%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s): the former lists the quote as "a proverbial saying, late 14th century, distinguishing between necessity and indulgence; Diogenes Laertius says of Socrates, 'he said that other men live to eat, but eats to live.' A similar idea is found in the Latin of Cicero, 'one must eat to live, not live to eat'"; the latter, reiterates this. Moreover, in William Shepard Walsh's 1909 Handy-book of Literary Curiosities, he adds that "According to Plutarch, what Socrates said was, 'Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.'" He also adds that Atheneus quotes similarly to Laertius, as well as explores other later variations (http://books.google.com/books?id=hrJkAAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s).
Misattributed
James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet
Letter to Fanny Guillermet (Zurich, 5 September 1918)
Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Source: The Analects, Chapter VI
William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience
Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience