Quotes about living (10000 quotes, page 7)

“It's a difficult question and not one you can answer until you're faced with it. Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe." -Brom”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

People , Courage , Question , Suffering

“To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, and not love things and use people.”

John Powell (1645–1713) American Jesuit priest

Love , People , Learning

“It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Happy , Relationship , Cute , Smile

“No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

Books , Understanding , Parting

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Out of Solitude

For Friend , Pain , Reality , Personality

“The only goal is in the process. The process is the thing…with little flashes of light here and there. Those are the gigs, those are the live shows. But it’s the life in between—that’s all I got.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

From Grace EPK (Electronic Press Kit)

Life , Light

“Once in one's life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived”

Sylvester Stallone (1946) American actor, screenwriter, and film director

Sylvester Stallone, interviewed by Rob Carnevale in " Sylvester Stallone: Rocky Balboa http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2007/01/15/sylvester_stallone_rocky_balboa_2007_interview.shtml", BBC (28 October 2014).

Life

“Better to die than to live in fear.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Roran, on the cause of the Varden
Inheritance (2011)

Fear

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

BBC Radio broadcast, Russian service, as quoted in The Listener (15 February 1979).

People , Dogs , Communication , Dead

“Silently hear everyone. Accept what is good. Reject and forget what is not. This is intelligent living.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Intelligence , Forgetting

“Harvard's motto is "Veritas." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Truth

“The gnani is afraid of nothing. But he pities the man who is afraid. After all, to be born, to live and to die is natural. To be afraid is not. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Courage
Source: I am That, P.183.

Nature

“Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood — all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Life , Feeling , Spring , Question

“On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us — ah! what a dream, to live in that! — the other stifles us at the first breath.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

The Photographer’s Wife
Gigi (1945)

World , Dreams

“Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XXVI, lines 118–120.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Knowledge

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life , Pain , World , Penalty

“If I am to live longer, perhaps I must live out my old age, seeing and hearing less, understanding worse, coming to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful, and growing worse than those to whom I was once superior. Indeed, life would be unliveable, even if I did not notice the change. And if I see the change, how could life not be even more wretched and unpleasant?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Memorabilia IV.8.8
Xenophon

Life , Age , Understanding , Learning

“Do not demand love. Begin to love. You will be loved. It is the law and no statute can alter it. If we do not follow the law, and let the law die with the teacher, we shall become accomplices to the murderer. But if follow the law with our hearts, [Bapu] will live with us and through us.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

Rajagopalachari (12 February 1949), quoted in [Rajmohan Gandhi, Rajaji: A Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=JjPHeRd7_UYC&pg=PA475, 1997, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-026967-3, 286]
Spoken by C.R when Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu) was assassinated.

Love , Law , Teachers , Heart

“Over the next few decades the main question in Europe will be this: will Europe remain the continent of the Europeans? Will Hungary remain the country of the Hungarians? Will Germany remain the country of the Germans? Will France remain the country of the French? Or will Italy remain the country of the Italians? Who will live in Europe?”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Question , Country

“We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.

Literature , Support , Nature , Forgetting

“It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die, so that the country may live.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Original French: Je prononce à regret cette fatale vérité... mais Louis doit mourir, parce qu'il faut que la patrie vive.
Speech to the National Convention http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/journal_debats/an/1792/convention_1792_12_03.htm on the judgment of Louis XVI (3 December 1792)

Truth , Country

“Living a lie the whole time — the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them … it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you can't imagine.”

George Orwell book Burmese Days

John Flory, Ch. III
Burmese Days (1934)

Lie , Way , Imagination , Time

“The people of East Pakistan will owe it to the million who have died in the cyclone to make the supreme sacrifice of another million lives, if need be, so that we can live as a free people.”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Addressing a rally before the 1970 general elections in Pakistan. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878408,00.html
Quote, Other

People

“He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XLI
Adonais (1821)

Death , Dead

“Where do I live?”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

The Osbournes television show (visiting fire brigade)

“One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Motivation

“A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favorite part of the business — live concerts.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Press conference (5 September 1972), also quoted in Paranoia & Power : Fear & Fame of Entertainment Icons (2007) by Gene N Landrum, p. 60

Business , Parting

“Lastly, we must also know what Baptism signifies, and why God has ordained just such external sign and ceremony for the Sacrament by which we are first received into the Christian Church. But the act or ceremony is this, that we are sunk under the water, which passes over us, and afterwards are drawn out again. These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam, and after that the resurrection of the new man, both of which must take place in us all our lives, so that a truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever to be continued.”

Martin Luther Luther's Large Catechism

"On Infant Baptism," Large Catechism (1529)

Life , Death , God , Water

“When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart.”

Tom Morello (1964) American guitarist and singer-songwriter

http://www.musicfanclubs.org/rage/articles/guitaryear.htm

People , Books

“Archie's been living off the fat of the land.
I'm here to give him his pension plan.
When you come to the fight don't block the door.
'Cause you'll all go home after round four.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Before his fight with Archie Moore (1962), as quoted in "Muhammad Ali was also great for civil rights" by Mark Wiedmer, in Times Free Press (17 January 2012) http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/jan/17/muhammad-ali-also-great-for-civil-rights/?print

Home , Fight

“The demons have always effected that all those who ever so little strived to live by logos and shun vice be hated.”

Justin Martyr (100–165) early Christian martyr

Source: Second Apology, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 40

Hate

“All the busy little creatures
chasing out their destinies.
Living in their pools
they soon forget about the sea…
-- Natural Science (1980)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Business , Nature , Science , Sea

“It was a perpetual holiday – and what an assortment of people. You could still enjoy yourself in those days! Machinery didn't take up the whole of life; there was time for living, and we made the most of it... I found as many magnificent girls to paint as I wanted; in those days one wasn't reduced to following a little model around for an hour and then being treated as a disgusting old man at the end of it.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 28 : Renoir's quote to Vollard referring to the Isle Grenouillere, where he painted in 1869, together with Claude Monet.

Life , People , Girl , Time

“What then is the place and role of the writer in this cruel, dynamic, split world on the brink of its ten destructions? After all we have nothing to do with letting off rockets, we do not even push the lowliest of hand-carts, we are quite scorned by those who respect only material power. Is it not natural for us too to step back, to lose faith in the steadfastness of goodness, in the indivisibility of truth, and to just impart to the world our bitter, detached observations: how mankind has become hopelessly corrupt, how men have degenerated, and how difficult it is for the few beautiful and refined souls to live amongst them?
But we have not even recourse to this flight. Anyone who has once taken up the WORD can never again evade it; a writer is not the detached judge of his compatriots and contemporaries, he is an accomplice to all the evil committed in his native land or by his countrymen.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Men , Truth , World , Faith

“Successful people do things, and get over with it, and leave others to live their life off it. I DO them. And then I leave it to others to live their life off it.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi

Life , People , Success

“The Revolution is so that people can live, not so that they can die!”

Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese novelist and essayist

Source: [citation needed]

People

“In consequence of my ill luck my life was again made a misery to me, so that I again ran away and went hawking on my own account, but my deformity had grown to such an extent, so that I could not move about the town without having a crowd of people gather around me. I then went into the infirmary at Leicester, where I remained for two or three years, when I had to undergo an operation on my face, having three or four ounces of flesh cut away; so thought I, I'll get my living by being exhibited about the country. Knowing Mr. Sam Torr, Gladstone Vaults, Wharf Street, Leicester, went in for Novelties, I wrote to him, he came to see me, and soon arranged matters, recommending me to Mr. Ellis, Bee-hive Inn, Nottingham, from whom I received the greatest kindness and attention. In making my first appearance before the public, who have treated me well — in fact I may say I am as comfortable now as I was uncomfortable before. I must now bid my kind readers adieu.”

Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) English man with severe deformities

Autobiographical sideshow pamphlet

Life , People , Appearance , Bee

“A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

352
Table Talk (1569)

Thinking , Reading

“It’s something very few actors really get to experience. When you’re a character actor or voiceover guy, it’s job to job. You’re like a migrant worker, almost. The longevity [of “SpongeBob”] is an unbelievable statistical anomaly. It’s like, I didn’t buy that many lottery tickets and I won the lottery. It’s a totally random, harmonic convergence of people you met and your agent getting you an audition. Actors have so little control over their own lives; it’s nice to have something you’re not in control of that’s actually positive. There was a point when “SpongeBob” was cancelled after the first few seasons and the first movie. We went to a wrap party that I thought was the season wrap party but was the series wrap party. Nobody knew. So I already feel like I dodged a bullet.”

Tom Kenny (1962) American actor

Interview: Tom Kenny talks voicing SpongeBob Squarepants and 'Mr. Show' http://www.metro.us/entertainment/interview-tom-kenny-talks-voicing-spongebob-squarepants-and-mr-show/zsJoba---UspN3mmMXb2BE (February 2, 2015)

People , Guy , Feeling , Season

“And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my death punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more severe with you, and you will be more offended at them. For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censoring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

39c–d
Plato, Apology

Death , Men , Way , Thinking

“Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars, its feet for the swords; it continueth, though an army lay waste the pasture; it comforteth when there are no medicines; it hath the relish of manna; and by it do men live in the desert.”

Gilbert Parker (1862–1932) Canadian novelist and British politician

"The White Omen"

Love , Men , Star

“It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not of the right proportion: the perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 177.

Perfection

“The main thing missing from cartoons is today that old cartoons were cartoony. They did things you can't do in any other medium. Today's cartoons are very conservative and are more like live action. The characters look the same in every frame of the damn cartoon. The old cartoons squashed, stretched, and did crazy expressions. They were imaginative and crazy. A lot of cartoons aren't imaginative, they just say things. It might as well be radio. There is no point in having anything to look at in modern cartoons. But you can't say that about every cartoon. Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoons are beautiful. The closest thing now to what I'm saying is SpongeBob but even that doesn't go very far. It's like a conservative version of Ren & Stimpy.”

John Kricfalusi (1955) Canadian animator

Daniel Robert Epstein (Oct 12, 2004), " John Kricfalusi, interview http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/John%20Kricfalusi/", SuicideGirls, retrieved 2011-03-01

Beauty , Imagination

“I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Soul , Confidence , Spring , Evil

“Some people say, "How can you live without knowing?" I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture I: "The Uncertainty of Science"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

People

“I have lived with my conscience and my own memories for over quarter of a century since the events of 1973.… These are not easy reflections for me. But I am at peace with myself, and with the Chilean people, about what happened. I am clear in my mind that the return to Chile of true democracy, and from that the true freedom to which all individual people are entitled, could not have been achieved without the removal of the Marxist government.”

Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006) Former dictator of the republic of Chile

Statement (8 November 1998)
1990s

People , Peace , Democracy , Freedom

“I've found a place that would amaze you. People used to live there, but now it's all overgrown and no one goes there. Absolutely no one — only me… Just a little house and a garden. And two dogs. If you could see how they licked my hands, and their puppies — oh, Primus, there's probably nothing more beautiful! You take them on your lap and cuddle them, and just sit there until sundown not thinking about anything and not worrying about anything. Then when you get up you feel as though you've done a hundred times more than a lot of work. Really, I'm not good for much of anything. Everyone says I'm not cut out for any kind of work. I don't know what I'm good for.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People , Beauty , Dogs , Feeling

“The hardest regret to live with is what you’ve done to hurt someone else. And I can hardly wrap my head around the scope of hurt I brought on them.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Hurt

“But the other conception, namely the infusion of the soul, it is piously and suitably believed, was without any sin, so that while the soul was being infused, she would at the same time be cleansed from original sin and adorned with the gifts of God to receive the holy soul thus infused. And thus, in the very moment in which she began to live, she was without all sin.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 4, 694

God , Soul , Time

“It is as a composer that his name will live longest. He was the last of the colourful Russian masters of the late 19th cent[ury], with their characteristic gift for long and broad melodies imbued with a resigned melancholy which is never long absent.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Michael Kennedy The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, 3rd edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1980) p. 516.
Criticism

“Parents always live a less pure life than their children, because they condone everything they do. The ability to condone everything in oneself but practically nothing in one's children is the boon that "experience" bestows on humanity. What parents call experience is really nothing but attempts, successful to the point of sheer cynicism, to belie everything which they found pure, true and right when they were young. They themselves don't notice the awful cynicism behind this incessant talk of "experience" being the highest aim in life: they only notice "inexperience" in their children, that is, the form of inexperience called purity and integrity, and then they get annoyed.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 135

Life , Children , Parent , Success

“In order to touch the heart and gain the confidence, the assent, the adhesion, and the co-operation of the illiterate legions of the proletariat — and the vast majority of proletarians unfortunately still belong in this category — it is necessary to begin to speak to those workers not of the general sufferings of the international proletariat as a whole but of their particular, daily, altogether private misfortunes. It is necessary to speak to them of their own trade and the conditions of their work in the specific locality where they live; of the harsh conditions and long hours of their daily work, of the small pay, the meanness of their employer, the high cost of living, and how impossible it is for them properly to support and bring up a family.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)

Family , Confidence , Support , Suffering

“Maybe you're the same as me / We see things they'll never see / You and I are gonna live forever.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Live Forever
Definitely Maybe (1994)

“God save us from seeing a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless. Those who plot impossible upheavals among us, are either young and do not know our people, or are hard-hearted men who do not care a straw either about their own lives or those of others.”

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) Russian poet

Found in Pushkin's. The Captain's Daughter and Other Stories. English edition by Random House LLC. 2013. p. 139
As quoted by Joseph Frank in Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (2009). Princeton University Press, p. 203.

Men , God , People , Heart

“Moreover, because the slothful mind is typically brought to its downfall gradually, when we fail to control our speech, we move on to more harsh words. Thus, at first, we are happy to speak of others kindly; afterwards, we begin to pick at the lives of those of whom we speak, and finally our tongues break into open slander against them.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

Source: The Book of Pastoral Rule, p.124

Happiness

“The person who does not control his territory does not control his existence. If someone is not conscious, he is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault him. He is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, and then—catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don't have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you're heading for. In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-Shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, "What is your purpose in life?" I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, "If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you."”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us...
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love , Life , Feeling , Mountain

“Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon http://books.google.com/books?id=ZikGAQAAIAAJ&pg=P139", Overland Monthly, volume XI, number 2 (August 1873) pages 139-147 (at page 146); modified and reprinted in John of the Mountains (1938), page 77
1870s

“Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

"Pensées Tirées des Premières Éditions," Réflexions: Ou, Sentences Et Maximes Morales de La Rochefoucauld (1822)
Later Additions to the Maxims

Dead

“I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

38e–39a
Plato, Apology

Death , War , Law , Way

“I am going the way of my fathers, as the Scripture says, for I see myself called by the Lord. Be you wary and undo not your long service of God, but be earnest to keep your strong purpose, as though you were but now beginning. You know the demons who plot against you, you know how savage they are and how powerless; therefore, fear them not. Let Christ be as the breath you breathe; in Him put your trust. Live as dying daily, heeding yourselves and remembering the counsels you have heard from me. … So do you also be earnest always to be in union first with the Lord and then with the Saints, that after death, they also may receive you into everlasting tabernacles as known friends. Ponder these things, and mean them. … And now God save you, children, for Antony departs and is with you no more.”

Anthony the Great (251–357) Christian saint, monk, and hermit

Book IV, Chapter 20 (his last words), St. Athanasius. Trans. Dom J.B. McLaughlin, O.S.B. St. Antony of the Desert. Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc, 1995.
From St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony

Death , God , Children , Fear

“You know that episode where I said I'd stopped drinking? Well, I lied. Ted is so militant in his views. I lived with him for 12 days and it's hard to imagine ever doing anything that would truly look good in his eyes. Also he said some stuff online about Dimebag which I thought was really not cool. I'm not going to repeat it but you can check it out online.”

Sebastian Bach (1968) Canadian singer

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=60702 Blabbermouth.net (October 21, 2006)

Imagination , Drink

“The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Scars on the Soul (1972)

Love , Life , Pleasure , Way

“There is a hierarchy amongst living beings, that is eternal [without beginning or end].”

Madhvacharya (1199–1278) Hindu philosopher who founded Dvaita Vedanta school

Beginner’s Guide to Sri MadhvAchArya’s Life and Philosophy

“[…] It is better to live for just a single day as a ruler than to live for forty years as an abject slave.”

Babak Khorramdin (798–838) Persian revolutionary

Babak Khorramdin's letter to his son, rejecting the caliph’s amnesty message, quoted by Al-Tabari, edited by C. E. Bosworth, History of al-Tabari Vol. 33, The: Storm and Stress along the Northern Frontiers of the 'Abbasid Caliphate: The Caliphate of al-Mu'tasim A.D. 833-842/A.H. 218-227 https://books.google.com/books?id=Ky2rl0xN2SQC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=%22Better+to+live+for+just+a+single+day+as+a+ruler+than+to+live+for+forty+years+as+an+abject+slave.%22&source=bl&ots=D6-WGySNBR&sig=9MJm8qw6MeNgY1kPHEjtcxA_okY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMI2YO62Pb0xwIVjOwUCh2l8APi#v=onepage&q=%22Better%20to%20live%20for%20just%20a%20single%20day%20as%20a%20ruler%20than%20to%20live%20for%20forty%20years%20as%20an%20abject%20slave.%22&f=false

“All things living are in search of a better world.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Preface
In Search of a Better World (1984)

World , Search

“America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" – a recently popular metaphor used to described New York's diversity – is being hotly debated today in national discussions about affirmative action.”

Sonia Sotomayor (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Address to the Raising the Bar symposium (2001)

Color , Way

“My mom and I lived at Hollywood and Western, a drug-dealer and prostitute corner. It was pretty terrifying. I got beat up a lot. I saw people have sex in the alleys. I remember I was five years old, and this guy with a trench coat, needles and crack cornered me. Early on, seeing the devastation on my block, seeing heroin addicts, made me think twice about ever getting involved in drugs. It's evil. Once you take that step and experiment, drugs can take over your life. You are not yourself anymore. That's something I never wanted. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. It was kind of just me and my parents. But because of them, the neighborhood did not have a bad effect on me. My dad introduced me to artists, and every few months we'd go to some hippie doo-dah parade as Mudmen in our underwear, carrying sticks and covered in mud. My mother did everything to get me into the best schools she could find.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Life , People , School , Sex

“So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Life , People , Books , World

“If I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good to either you or to myself. …for the truth is that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteouosness and wrong in the State, will save his life; he who will really fight for right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public one.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

31e
Plato, Apology

Life , War , Truth , Fight

“The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 37.

Age , World , Reality

“All living beings are dependent upon Vishnu for their existence.”

Madhvacharya (1199–1278) Hindu philosopher who founded Dvaita Vedanta school

Beginner’s Guide to Sri MadhvAchArya’s Life and Philosophy

Dependency

“I made a change from a common thief, to up-close and personal with Robin Leach, and I'm far from cheap. I smoke skunk with my peeps all day, spread love it's the Brooklyn way. The moet and alize keeps me pissy. Girls used to diss me, now they write letters cuz they miss me. I never thought it could happen this rapping stuff. I was too used to packing gats and stuff. Now honeys play me close like butter played toast, from the Mississippi down to the East Coast. Condos in queens, indoor for weeks. sold out seats to hear Biggy Smalls speak. Living life without fear, putting 5 carats in my baby girls ears. Lunchies, brunchies. Interviews by the pool, considered a fool 'cause I dropped out of high school. Stereotypes of a black male misunderstood and it's still all good.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

Love , Life , Fear , School

“As a civil activist, I am one of the thousands of the victims of such horrible tortures. I have come to this conclusion: the aim of solitary confinement is brain-washing, so that prisoners, deprived of normal living conditions, lose their unique human characteristics, their train of thought and ideas, and their physical and psychological health.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Health , Idea , Training

“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness".
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and to be free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

Those are undeniable truths.
Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence (2 September 1945), Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works (1960-1962), Vol. 3, pp. 17-21

Life , Men , People , Truth

“Upon the earth are animals and men, some in a middle region, others dwelling about the air as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near the continent; and in a word, the air is used by them as the water and the sea are by us, and the ether is to them as the air is to us. Moreover, the temperament of their seasons is such that they have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell, and all the other senses, in far greater perfection, in the same degree that air is purer than water or the ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their answers and are conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with this.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Men , God , Disease , Star

“I'm a grounded person. I don't need security when I'm home as they know who I am. I live with my mum and tour with my dad… I'm just a regular 16-year-old kid. I make good grilled cheese and I like girls.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Interview with The Sun, as quoted by MTV http://www.mtv.co.uk/news/justin-bieber/201278-justin-bieber-my-world-20, March 2010

Home , Girl , Personality

“As we have already learned how to sacrifice our own lives, now no one can stop us!”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Quote, This time the struggle is for our freedom (1971)

Learning

“One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 45

Life , Nature

“I have to find my peace 'cause no-one seems to let me be,
False prophets cry of doom, what are the possibilities?
I told my brothers 'There'll be problem times and tears for fears,
We must live each day like it's the last,
Go with it, go with it, jam!”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Dangerous (1991)

Fear , Peace , Problem , Tear

“Now, just a word about the poor Negroes … They're here. They've got to be cared for … The poor Negroes have got to live, too.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long as Governor (Williams p. 704)

“All the people that were rooting for me to fail… at the end of the day, tomorrow they have to wake up and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. … They got the same personal problems they had today. And I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things I want to do.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

James not bothered by those rooting for him to fail, Steve Ginsburg, Reuters, June 13, 2011 http://ca.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/idCATRE75C0T420110613,
James addressing fans after losing to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals.

Life , People , Way , Problem

“The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

38a
Variant translations:
(More closely) The unexamining life is not worth living for a human being
The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
An unexamined life is not worth living.
The unexamined life is not the life for man.
Life without enquiry is not worth living for a man.
Plato, Apology

Life , Wise

“So often we need a whole lifetime in order to change our life, we think a great deal, weigh things up and vacillate, then we go back to the beginning, we think and think, we displace ourselves on the tracks of time with a circular movement, like those clouds of dust, dead leaves, debris, that have no strength for anything more, better by far that we should live in a land of hurricanes.”

José Saramago book The Stone Raft

The Stone Raft (1994)

Life , Thinking , Change , Time

“Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.”

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

As quoted in The World's Religions (1976) by Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, p. 61

God , Failure , Forgetting

“... it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

The Devil’s Disciples: Hitler’s Inner Circle by Anthony Read (2004) p. 142, diary entry Oct. 23, 1925
Diary excerpts

“It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party", New Leader (24 June 1939)

Thinking , Change , Personality

“We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.”

Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy

Lady of Andros, fragment 50.

Inspirational , Life

“I will remain what I am until I die, a hunter, and when there are no buffalo or other game I will send my children to hunt and live on prairie, for where an Indian is shut up in one place his body becomes weak.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Recorded by James M. Walsh, inspector in the Northwest Territory of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, at a conference with Sitting Bull on March 23, 1879. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 206.

Children , Game

“It is better to live on the house top
than to live in a house full of confusion.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Running Away, from the album Kaya
Song lyrics

Housing

“And you, the living soul, you over there
get away from all these people who are dead.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, lines 88–89 (tr. Mark Musa).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

People , Soul , Dead

“From everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad.”

Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer

The Bridges, as quoted in The Old Bridge of Mostar and Increasing Respect for Cultural Property in Armed Conflict (2012) by Jadranka Petrovic, p. 65

Secret , Sense , Housing

“I wanted man to become a master! So he wouldn't have to live from hand to mouth! I didn't want to see another soul grow numb slaving over someone else's machines! I wanted there to be nothing, nothing, nothing left of that damned social mess! I abhorred degradation and suffering! I was fighting against poverty! I wanted a new generation of mankind! … I wanted to transform all of humanity into a world-wide aristocracy. Unrestricted, free, and supreme people. Something even greater than people.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People , World , Soul , Suffering

“He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Phaedo
Plato, Phaedo

Death , World , Hope

“Be more careful in guarding against censure than against danger; for the wicked may well dread the end of life, but good men should dread ignominy during life. Strive by all means to live in security, but if ever it falls to your lot to face the dangers of battle, seek to preserve your life, but with honour and not with disgrace; for death is the sentence which fate has passed on all mankind, but to die nobly is the special honour with nature has reserved for the good.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 43.
To Demonicus

Life , Death , Men , Fate

“As a writer, my goal, (which I'm never going to achieve, and I know that, and no writer can achieve that,) but my goal is to make you almost live the books… I want you to fall through that page and feel as if these things are happening to you.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Audio Interview http://www.geekson.com/archives/archiveepisodes/2006/episode080406.htm with Geekson http://www.geekson.com in Episode 54, (4 August 2006)

Books , Feeling

“Having a child changes every aspect of your life — for the better, of course. The sacrifices are large, but what you get in return is even bigger than the sacrifices you make. I feel, in a sense, ready to die because you are living on in your child. Not literally, not ready to die — but you know, that sort of feeling in a profound way.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

November 2007 interview remarks quoted by Susan Chenery, "Who Is That Man?" http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23097733-15803,00.html, In Touch Weekly, January 23, 2008.

Life , Way , Feeling , Sense