life Quotes

“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.”

“Where there’s life there’s hope.”

“All’s well that ends better.”

“The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”

“I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny.”

“After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.”

“Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.”

“Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”

“All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.”

“Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.”

“Beauty, youth, good fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain, loss and sorrow, from the most blessed for...into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and sad and dreary.”

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

“We ask for long life, but ‘tis deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.”

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”

“Much of our work now is more a matter of “rehumanizing.” That starts in the same place dehumanizing starts--with words and images...We must never tolerate dehumanization--the primary instrument of violence that has been used in every genocide recorded throughout history. When we engage in dehumanizing rhetoric or promote dehumanizing images, we diminish our own humanity in the process...[it] says volumes about who we are and the degree to which we’re operating in our integrity.”

“Earth is crammed with Heaven.”

“To live will be an awfully big adventure.”

“To be alive──is Power.”

“‘Dear old world’, she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.‘”

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”

“Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that’s the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”

“A book is just like life and anything can change.”

“The lesson being that in life you control what you can.”

“This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

“Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”

“I love Twinkies, and the reason I am saying that is because we are all supposed to think of reasons to live.”

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

“Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

“Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism -- that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.”

“One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.”

“Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?”

“I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream -- I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal -- to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be.”

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

“I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”

“But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.”

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”

“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so.

“Something in me did not want to give up on life, was unwilling to let go, wanted to fight to the very end. Where that part of me got the heart, I don’t know.”

“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”

“That’s what I love about Aibileen, she can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so small and simple, they’ll fit right in your pocket.”

“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.”

“The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”

“Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.”

“Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.”

“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it’s no worse than it is.”

“If we’d never met, I think I would have known that my life wasn’t complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn’t know who I was looking for.”

“But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.”

“Live in the present, make the most of it, it’s all you’ve got.”

“Life isn’t fair, it’s just fairer than death, that’s all.”

“You see, though we travel together, we travel alone.”

“I am not your justification for existence.”

“It was a star,” Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. “A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning.”

“You are my life now.”

“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn’t know a thing about life.”

“Putting black cloths on the hives is for us. I do it to remind us that life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way into life.”

″‘Covering the hives was supposed to keep the bees from leaving. You see, the last thing they wanted was their bees swarming off when a death took place. Having bees around was supposed to ensure that the dead person would live again.’ “My eyes grew wide, “Really?′ ”‘Tell her about Aristaeus,’ Zach said. ”‘Oh, yes, Aristaeus. Every beekeeper should know that story . . . Aristaeus was the first keeper of bees. One day all his bees died, punishment by the gods for something bad that Aristaeus had done. The gods told him to sacrifice a bull to show he was sorry, and then return to the carcass in nine days and look inside it. Well, Aristaeus did just what they said, and when he came back, he saw a swarm of bees fly out of the dead bull. His own bees, reborn. He took them home to his hives, and after that people believed that bees had power over death. The kings in Greece made their tombs in the shape of beehives for that very reason.‘”

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

“In his face, I see the whole of my life. I see a baby who came to me long after I’d given up … and a hint of the beauty I once had. I see … my life in his eyes.”

“One thing I can tell you for sure is this: we only regret what we don’t do in life.”

“You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”

“It has been,” I told him, “the best six months of my entire life.” There was a long silence. “Funnily enough, Clark, mine too.” And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it.

“Who is it who decides that one man should live and another should die? My life wasn’t worth any more than his, but he’s the one who’s buried, while I get to enjoy at least a few more hours above the ground. Is it chance, random and cruel, or is there some purpose or pattern to all this, even if it lies beyond our ken?”

“Just live well. Just live.”

“Live faithfully, fight bravely, and die laughing.”

“It’s impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.”

“How could you live each day knowing that you were simply whiling away the days until your own death?”

“I had some terrific experiences in the wilderness since I wrote you last - overpowering, overwhelming,” he gushed to his friend Cornel Tengel. “But since then I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life.”

“It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it’s great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”

″[Y]ou must strive to be calm, even if a hundred ravening enemies are snapping at your heels. Empty your mind and allow it to become like a tranquil pool that reflects everything around it and yet remains untouched by its surroundings. Understanding will come to you in that emptiness, when you are free of irrational fears about victory and defeat, life and death.”

“Why else do any of this if not to become who we want to be?”

“The truth is I’m not good at enjoying life.”

“We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.”

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

“Never has it felt more important for me to tell stories of joy and abandon, passion and recklessness. Life is short and difficult, people. We must take our pleasures where we can find them. Let us not become so cautious that we forget to live.”

“Follow what feels good in the moment, every moment, and it will lead you through a most excellent life.”

“Life is made of so many partings welded together.”

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

“George said wonderingly, ‘S’pose they was a carnival or a circus come to town, or a ball game, . . . We’d just go to her . . . We wouldn’t ask nobody if we could. Jus’ say, ‘We’ll go to her,’ an’ we would. Jus’ milk the cow and sling some grain to the chickens an’ go to her.‘”

“For life be, after all, only a waitin’ for somethin’ else than what we’re doin’; and death be all that we can rightly depend on.”

“No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.”

“The blood is the life!”

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

“Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…”

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.”

“Rejoice with us,” said the air and the sunlight. “Enjoy thine own bright life in the fresh air.” But the tree would not rejoice, though it grew taller every day; and, winter and summer, its dark-green foliage might be seen in the forest, while passers by would say, “What a beautiful tree!”

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote, To travel is to live.”

Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”

“One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse.”

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

“My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren’t with me I haven’t a thing in the world.”

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can’t help feeling that that’s what it is.

“They haven’t an idea of what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness--no life at all.”

“Well, it may have escaped your notice, but life isn’t fair.”

“All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”

“Every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life.”

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

Breathe, hope

“He don’t want to die. He wants to keep on living even though he’s so old and there’s nothing to be happy about anymore.”

Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

“How can I live without thee, how forgoe Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d?”

I say no wealth is worth my life!

Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.

Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

My life is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”

“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

“Meanwhile my business is not to bother, but simply to be thankful for life and love.”

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”

“She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organization, should move in the realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic.”

The weak suffer more, where the trial is the same, than the strong. And, what are the elementary principles, we may ask, which compose human strength? Is it not - more than anything else - exercise, habit, experience?

“Whatever life you lead, you must put your soul into it--to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you; it becomes reality!”

“You must save what you can of your life; you musn’t lose it all simply because you have lost a part.”

We shine like those fires and those stars; we sigh like those waves; we suffer like those great ships, which are worn out in ploughing the waves, in obeying the wind which urges them towards an end, as the breath of God blows us towards a port. Everything likes to live, Raoul; and everything is beautiful in living things.

That which is actually good never alters.

Pain, anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed.

One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.

Man upon this earth must expect everything, and ought to face everything.

There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient’s chest hears not, through he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; the knife has never been able to destroy, and rarely even, temporarily, to discern the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind, which they corrupt; they fill the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers, fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their scourge?

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

“Where there’s life there’s hope, and need of vittles.”

“When I was alive, I believed as you do; that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and ‘Monday’ as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that- then any time at all will be the right time for you.”

Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.

“I don’t talk things...I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.”

Until death it is all life.

“True love is rare, and it’s the only thing that gives life real meaning.”

“Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg you, woman, prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before God’s judgment in this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride. Will you plead with him? I cannot think he will listen to another.”

“It is at moments like these that I know my what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return. I am here because there is no other place to be.”

“Life passes by now like the scenery outside a car window. I breathe and eat and sleep as I always did, but there seems to be no great purpose in my life that requires active participation on my part...I do not know where I am going or when I will get there.”

“It’s impossible to protect your kids against disappointment in life.”

“You must determine where you are going in your life, because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not move you forward. It will instead disappoint and frustrate you and make you anxious and unhappy and hard to get along with (and then resentful, and then vengeful, and then worse).”

Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.

″‘Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.‘” ‘Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.’ Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right—I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”

“Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow.”

Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

I don’t want to die without any scars.

This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.

If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic.

“I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?”

No, I’ve been calm all my life! If I don’t do something, it’s gonna kill me!

This is a battle, boys. War! You are souls at a critical juncture. Either you will succumb to the will of academic hoi polloi, and the fruit will die on the vine— or you will triumph as individuals.

Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, “Life is so beautiful,” then nothing else is important. If i can believe in myself that much, nothing else matters.

Sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone.

Carpe Diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

Windmill or no windmill, life would go on as it had always gone on - that is, badly.

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for.

It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive.

Whatever life takes away from you, let it go.

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.

They say that life’s a game, & then they take the board away.

It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses, and apologized to no one.

He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.

“Be glad you’re even alive.” “Be furious you’re going to die.”

Anything worth living for is worth dying for.

Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration.

By eliminating the safety net of comforts in your life, you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openness which is the source of your gifts.

Every moment waited is a moment wasted.

Men who have lived significant lives are men who never waited: not for money, security, ease, or women. Feel what you want to give most as a gift, to your woman and to the world, and do what you can to give it today.

You are either living fully, giving your gift in the midst of those challenges, even today, or you are waiting for an imaginary future which will never come.

“If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?”

“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”

“Life becomes far easier once you know that things will still work out even if you are lacking something.”

“Even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.”

“Any part of me that identified with being handsome was slowly being erased—though, in fairness, I was happy to be uglier and alive.”

“I sat, staring at a photo of Lucy and me from medical school, dancing and laughing; it was so sad, those two, planning a life together, unaware, never suspecting their own fragility.”

We that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

“My life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized. I had planned to do so much, and I had come so close. I’ve spent almost a third of my life preparing for it. I had mapped out this whole forty-year career for myself—the first twenty as a surgeon-scientist, the last twenty as a writer. But now that I am likely well into my last twenty years, I don’t know which career I should be pursuing. If I had some sense of how much time I have left, it’d be easier. If I had two years, I’d write. If I had ten, I’d get back to surgery and science. If only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I’d spend time with family. Tell me one year, I’d write a book. Give me ten years, I’d get back to treating diseases. The truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I supposed to do with that day?”

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

“The truth is . . . once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

“We may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.”

“You can’t live your life for other people. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.”

“You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together.”

“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

“We are so afraid of the sight of death . . . As soon as someone dies in a hospital, they pull the sheets up over their head, and they wheel the body to some chute and push it down. . . . It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.”

“The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. Maybe they always have been and will be. Maybe we’ve lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we’ve found each other. And maybe each time, we’ve been forced apart for the same reasons. That means that this goodbye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years and a prelude to what will come.”

“You wish for something, you’ve wanted it for years, and you’re sure you want it, as long as you know you can’t have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing.”

“You must live your story.”

“He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: “Life is like that,” but he couldn’t agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.”

“No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”

“Alexander Rostov was neither scientist nor sage; but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate and our opinions evolve--if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew.”

“Since life is our most precious gift And since it is given to us to live but once, Let us so live that we will not regret.”

“It was, without question, the smallest room that he had occupied in his life; yet somehow, within those four walls the world had come and gone.”

“Life has to end. Love doesn’t.”

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.”

″For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient.″

“The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living.”

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”

“The nation was literally fighting for its literal life— ‘they or we.’ Anything went, and what ‘anything’ was, what enormities it embraced, depended entirely on the turn of the battle.”

Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now.

“The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.”

″First, we like pleasure; we are attached to it. Conversely, we don’t like pain. Second, we like and are attached to praise. We try to avoid criticism and blame. Third, we like and are attached to fame. We dislike and try to avoid disgrace. Finally, we are attached to gain, to getting what we want. We don’t like losing what we have.″

″Death in everyday life could also be defined as experiencing all the things that we don’t want. Our marriage isn’t working; our job isn’t coming together. Having a relationship with death in everyday life means that we begin to be able to wait, to relax with insecurity, with panic, with embarrassment, with things not working out.″

“What we don’t like, what *I* don’t like, is the hypocrisy of these people. I want to hear them confess. They they, or some of their countrymen and their country’s government, violated the precepts of Christian, civilized, lawful life was bad enough; they they won’t see it, or say it, is what really rowels.”

″Nontheism is finally realizing that there’s no babysitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that it’s not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.″

“Besides, Gertrude, public and private life are different things. They have different laws, and move on different lines.”

“Every life has one true love snapshot.”

“My ten friends had been told, not since 1939 but since 1933, that their nation was fighting for its life. They believed that self-preservation is the first law of nature, of the nature of nations as well as of herd brutes.”

“There are five people you meet in heaven. Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.”

“These problems are real, and you can’t turn off real life. So I won’t try. Instead, I’ll give you a set of tools to help you deal with real life.”

“Our knowledge of life is limited to death.”

“Life was cheap in war.”

“JUROR #8: This is somebody’s life. We can’t decide in five minutes.”

“Though the captives’ resistance was dangerous, through such acts, dignity was preserved and through dignity, life itself.”

“Just follow me and run like your life depends on it. Because it does.”

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember’d!”

“Moon Shadow, you once asked me who or what caused the earthquake. I don’t know. It could have been the gods, or dragons, or demons, or it could have simply been a natural event. It doesn’t matter, supernatural or natural; it means the same. This life is too short to spend it pursuing little things. I have to do what I know I can and must do.”

Black Dog looked at me intently. “Why shouldn’t we get some pleasure in this life? Why later? Why not now?” “Because we don’t owe things just to ourselves. There are others.”

“There was some beauty to life after all, even if it was only the beauty of hope.”

“JUROR #8: Look, this boy’s been kicked around all his life. You know - living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That’s not a very good head start. He had a pretty terrible sixteen years. I think maybe we owe him a few words. That’s all.”

“We are like the phoenix,” said Abuelita. “Rising again, with a new life ahead of us.”

“You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.”

“All through your life your soul takes care of you...your soul is alive and awakened, gathering, sheltering and guiding your ways and days in the world. In effect, your soul is your secret shelter.”

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. Why are we such fools—such tragic fools?”

“Psychologists call it ‘learned helplessness’ when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.”

“Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember ‘Life is too short to be little’”

″‘See these perfect rows, Miguel? They are like what my life would have been. These rows know where they are going. Straight ahead. Now my life is like the zigzag in the blanket on Mama’s bed.‘”

“Life, I’ve learned, is never fair. If people teach anything in school, that should be it.”

“May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. ”

“The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.”

“If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says: ‘I’m beaten. It is fate. I haven’t got a chance.’ Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of selfpity. But when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: ‘What lesson can I learn from this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into a lemonade?‘”

“A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.”

“The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses.”

“A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream?”

“...to gaze into the face of another is to gaze into the depth and entirety of his life.”

“Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.” ― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”

“Do you ever wonder why things have to turn out the way they do?”

“Think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass…if we do not take [tasks] one at a time and let them pass…slowly and evenly, then we are bound to break our own…structure.”

“Huddled together in the dining room and waiting for the sun to rise, none of us had any notion that a way of life had ended.”

“‘Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy,’ Mom told me. ‘You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.‘”

“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.”

“Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.”

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”