life

life

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.
You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Our life is made by the death of others.
Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Mother Night
Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. Autumn Leaves
I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Everything you can imagine is real.
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. Happy Birthday to You!
Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. William Goldman: Four Screenplays
Get busy living or get busy dying. The Shawshank Redemption
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
My idea is to give hope, because where there is no hope, there is no vision, and where there is no vision, people will perish. The Uncommon Wisdom Of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in Her Own Words
1. Accept everything just the way it is. 2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake. 3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling. 4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world. 5. Be detached from desire your whole life long. 6. Do not regret what you have done. 7. Never be jealous. 8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation. 9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others. 10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love. 11. In all things have no preferences. 12. Be indifferent to where you live. 13. Do not pursue the taste of good food. 14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need. 15. Do not act following customary beliefs. 16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful. 17. Do not fear death. 18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age. 19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help. 20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour. 21. Never stray from the Way.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.
You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Where there is love there is life.
Live to the point of tears.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.' Maud Muller - Pamphlet
Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world. Tao Te Ching
Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably And never regret ANYTHING That makes you smile.
When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
I'm killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.
We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.
People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. The Grim Grotto
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.
Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future--you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college. Paper Towns
Unbeing dead isn't being alive.
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
You live but once; you might as well be amusing.
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. The Sirens of Titan
I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in miracles
It is not the length of life, but the depth.
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you. Five Finger Exercise: A Play
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.
When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. Lady Windermere's Fan
Who says life is fair, where is that written? The Princess Bride
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
Life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all. The Princess Bride
Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. Norwegian Wood
Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.
Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle. Brida
There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.' No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.
Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present, and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.
The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. Tuesdays With Morrie
You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life. Eleven Minutes
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. Books and You
I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable. Annie Hall
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Four Quartets
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work ... I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. The Open Door
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. Veronika Decides to Die
It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. How to Win Friends and Influence People
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape. Great Expectations
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Do or do not; there is no try. (Yoda) Great science fiction film stories.
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.
There are no random acts...We are all connected...You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind... The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.
Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. Faust
The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.
There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.
One of the 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.
The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience.
Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.
No lake so still but it has its wave. No circle so perfect but that it has its blur. I would change things for you if I could; As I can't you must take them as they are.
Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living.
Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized. The Buddha Said...: Meeting the Challenge of Life's Difficulties
I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing. The Stranger
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives.
Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.
My life didn't please me, so I created my life.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. The Bhagavad Gita
Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.
If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.
The meaning of life is that it stops.
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.
No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born. Flight to Arras
But how could you live and have no story to tell? White Nights
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed. The New Life
Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one. The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!
We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living. Notebook
You cannot change what you are, only what you do. The Golden Compass
Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.
Be happy, but never satisfied.
Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Amor Fati – Love Your Fate, which is in fact your life.
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
In order to write about life first you must live it.
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. The Salmon of Doubt
Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.
Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. The Green Mile
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. Letters to a Young Poet
When things go wrong, don't go with them.
Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain. The Wild Palms
Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing. Maktub
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. Life on the Mississippi
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it
Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.
From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.
A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms. Poems
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
You'd think, 'What if I make a mistake today, I'll regret it'. I don’t believe in regret, I feel everything leads us to where we are and we have to just jump forward, mean well, commit and just see what happens.
Life is not fair. Get used to it.
Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.
Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart. The Count of Monte Cristo
Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. The Art of War
At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.
We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Find out what God's doing. It's already blessed.
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps. — What more can the heart of a man desire? Family Happiness and Other Stories
All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. Crome Yellow
People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good."
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.
Once you leave out all the bullshit they teach you in school, life gets really simple. Brain Droppings
To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.
How far that little candle throws his beams. So shines a good deed in a weary world.
Ad astra per aspera. (To the stars through difficulties.)
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. Billions and Billions
Il est bien malais&eacute; ... d'&ocirc;ter &agrave; des insens&eacute;s des cha&icirc;nes qu'ils r&eacute;v&egrave;rent. (<em>It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.</em>) Le Dner Du Comte de Boulainvilliers. Par Mr. St. Hiacinte
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. Meditations
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the mext moment
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.
The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you will ever have.
My life isn&rsquo;t theories and formulas. It&rsquo;s part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I&rsquo;ve absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone&hellip; from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature.
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. Critique of Pure Reason
The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died. The Republic of Plato
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest &mdash; whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories &mdash; comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her. The Painted Veil
Never forget: we walk on hell, gazing at flowers.
Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else. The Lost World
The first step in making rabbit stew is catching the rabbit.
We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.
When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
While there's life, there's hope.
The best way to predict your future is to create it
Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
If you deliberately set out to be less than you are capable, you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe to match your nature with Nature.
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.
If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.
Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success. Rich Dad, Poor Dad
There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.