I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends – the fear, the terror, the pain – and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being.
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud…
The value of life is not in its duration, but in its donation. You are not important because of how long you live, you are important because of how effective you live.
I’m not sure if there’s one right place I’m supposed to be, he said, but I know a couple of wrong places I’d give a second try in a heartbeat.
Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.
One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.
Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning.
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
You never knew the last time you were seeing someone. You didn’t know when the last argument happened, or the last time you had sex, or the last time you looked into their eyes and thanked God they were in your life.
After they were gone?
That was all you thought about.
Day and night.
I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.
Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward–that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.
Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing…changing. You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.
I know that the whole point—the only point—is to
find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to
let them go.
I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
I’ve heard that people stand in bad situations because a relationship like that gets turned up by degrees. It is said that a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water. Place him in a pot and turn it up a little at a time, and he will stay until he is boiled to death. Us frogs understand this.
There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart
Life is not always going to be roses and rainbows. You are going to have uncomfortable moments. It’s what we do with those moments that is going to count and determine our destiny.
The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices and they led me somewhere else, led me to someone else. And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn’t end up with you.
Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
Do you know what you’re saying when you say, “Whatever”? It’s just a code word for the f-word, followed by “you.” And at your age, you never, ever. say that to anyone.’ ” Blaze leaned back. “So now, when someone says it to me, I just say, ‘You too.’ (72)
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.
If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it.
Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow?
Were the moments of beauty worth the year of pain?
And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says ‘Always.
When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.
Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.
For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.