Yes, we live, or we’re given the chance to, at least, but sometimes living is hard and complicated because of fear.
It is the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is choose which rules you want to live by, and it’s persistent and aggravated imbecility to pretend you can live without any.
Kiss a lover,
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure.
Face your life,
It’s pain,
It’s pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.
Love is forgiving, accepting, moving on, embracing, and all encompassing. And if you’re not doing that for yourself, you cannot do that with anyone else.
People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them
Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret.
Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.
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.
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty…But I am too busy thinking about myself.
Fame is foolish, it is pointless, meaningless. Even if the whole world knows you, how does it make you richer? How does it make your life more blissful? How does it help you to be more understanding, to be more aware? To be more alert, to be more alive?
Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.
You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don’t like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me, buddy, you’ve got nothing to apologize for.
She thought about her life and how lost she’d felt for most of it. She thought about the way that all truths she’d been taught to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living?
If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
Every good citizen makes his country’s honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense and is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it.
It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can’t even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It’s simply a matter of is and is no longer.
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
I know my life’s meaningful because” – and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued – ” because I’m a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy.
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.
What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.
March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.
When we set out on the path, we always have a fairly clear idea of what we hope to find. Women are generally seeking their Soul Mate, and men looking for Power. Neither party is really interested in learning. They simply want to reach the thing they have set as their goal.
Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?
The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish’.
I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.
The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.
I look at where I’m at today and realize that most of my success is owed to the mentors that was in my life.
Solitude led to retrospective thinking, and if the past is what you are trying to get away from, then constant distractions in the present are needed.
You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events.
Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking.
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.
For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people’s faces.
We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents…Sometimes the ‘unfinisheds’ are among the most beautiful symphonies.
We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.
The true definition of mental illness is when the majority of your time is spent in the past or future, but rarely living in the realism of NOW.
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from ‘Instructions’)
There’s nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.
I really think I write about everyday life. I don’t think I’m quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that’s what makes it so boring.
Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
I suppose there are a lot of reasons to be jaded or sarcastic or bitter in life, but I hang on to the reasons why life is beautiful.
If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.