Quotations from many of the world’s notables about living a life, especially one that is meaningful, comforting, and emotionally rewarding. Living a life is about more than physical existence, it is about how well one’s needs are met, how well one is able to live by one’s values.
Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.
Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.
This is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.
Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.
Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.
Don’t strew me with roses after I’m dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
Sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.
I believe that if, on every Sunday morning before going to church, we could be lifted to a mountain-peak and see a horizon line of six hundred miles enfolding the copious splendor of the light on such a varied expanse; or if we could look upon a square mile of flowers representing all the species with which the Creative Spirit embroiders a zone; or if we could be made to realize the distance of the earth from the sun, the light of which travels every morning twelve millions of miles a minute to feed and bless us, and which the force of gravitation pervades without intermission to hold our globe calmly in its orbit and on its poise; if we could fairly perceive, through our outward senses, one or two features of the constant order and glory of nature, our materialistic dullness would be broken, surprise and joy would be awakened, we should feel that we live amid the play of Infinite thought; and the devout spirit would be stimulated so potently that our hearts would naturally mount in praise and prayer.
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
Life’s problems wouldn’t be called ‘hurdles’ if there wasn’t a way to get over them.
Take time to work
IT IS THE PRICE OF SUCCESS.
Take time to think
IT IS THE SOURCE OF POWER.
Take time to play
IT IS THE SECRET OF PERPETUAL YOUTH.
Take time to be friendly
IT IS THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS.
Take time to love and be loved
IT IS A PRIVILEGE OF THE GODS.
Take time to share
LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE SELFISH.
Take time to laugh
LAUGHTER IS THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how.’
We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.
Supporting children to play requires us to remember what life is all about. It’s not about getting from A-Z, but rather dreaming beyond both.
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
One must work and dare if one really wants to live.
I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.
Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely is like. She is a person who understand, values and develops her body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.
You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Don’t take life so serious. It ain’t nohow permanent.
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Our lives improve only when we take chances — and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health – and create profitable diseases and dependences – by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight.
