life - life
2 - life 4 - life 5
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As I grow
to understand
life less and less,
I learn to live it
more and more.
Jules Renard
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Every day is a little life. . .
live every day as if it would be the last. Those that
dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal;
those that dare
misspend it are desperate.
Joseph Hall
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I have never been bored
an hour in my life. I get up every morning wondering
what new strange glamorous
thing is going to happen and it happens at fairly
regular intervals.
Lady
Luck has been good to me and I fancy she has been
good to everyone. Only
some people are dour, and when she gives them the
come hither with her eyes,
they look down or turn away and lift an eyebrow. But me, I give her the wink
and away we go.
William Allen White
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Life
holds no promises as to what will come your way. You must search for your
own ideals and work toward reaching them. Life makes no guarantees as to what
you’ll have. It just gives you time to make choices and to take chances
and to
discover whatever secrets that might come your way. If you are willing to take the opportunities you are given
and utilize the abilities you have, you will constantly
fill your life
with special moments and unforgettable times.
Dena Dilaconi
The aim, if reached or not, makes
great the life: try to be Shakespeare,
leave the
rest to fate.
Robert Browning
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Life only demands from you the strength
that you possess. Only one feat is possible--not to
have run away.
Dag Hammarskjold
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Everything has its wonders, even
darkness and silence,
and I learn, whatever state I may
be in, therein to be content.
Helen Keller
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Life is not always what one wants it
to be,
but to make
the best of it, as
it is, is the only way of
being happy.
Jennie Jerome Churchill
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Pythagoras used to say that life
resembles the Olympic Games:
a few people strain their
muscles to carry off a prize; others
bring trinkets to
sell to the crowd for gain;
and some there are,
and not
the worst, who seek no other profit than to look
at the
show and see how and why everything is done; spectators
of the
life
of other people in order to judge and regulate
their own.
Michel
de Montaigne
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The need to
make wise choices encompasses every area of our lives.
Since we have time for only a limited amount of
stuff,
we need to choose wisely what stuff we're going to
allow to take up that time.
Since we have only a
limited amount of time to spend with friends or to engage
in leisure activities, we need to choose our friends and
our activities wisely.
Elaine St. James
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If I had my life to live
over, I'd dare to make more mistakes
next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier
than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and
swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer
imaginary ones.
You see, I'm one of
those people who lived sensibly and sanely,
hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if
I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd
try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another,
instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been
one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do
it again, I would travel lighter than I have.
If I had my life to
live over, I would start barefoot earlier
in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go
to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would
pick more daisies.
This passage is
attributed to Nadine Stair,
who was 85, 87, or 89 when she wrote it, depending
on the source. However, it's worth noting that the
following article appeared in October of 1953.
You be the judge about the source:
Of
course, you can't unfry an egg, but there is no law against
thinking about it.
If I had my
life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes. I
would relax. I would be sillier than I have been this
trip. I know of very few things that I would take
seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would go
more places. I would climb more mountains and swim more
rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less bran.
I would have
more actual troubles and fewer imaginary troubles. You
see, I have been one of those fellows who live prudently and
sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had
my moments. But if I had it to do over again, I would
have more of them--a lot more. I never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over, I would travel lighter.
It may be too
late to unteach an old dog old tricks, but perhaps a word from
the unwise may be of benefit to a coming generation. It
may help them to fall into some of the pitfalls I have
avoided.
If I had my
life to live over, I would pay less attention to people who
teach tension. In a world of specialization we naturally
have a superabundance of individuals who cry at us to be
serious about their individual specialty. They tell us
we must learn Latin or History; otherwise we will be disgraced
and ruined and flunked and failed. After a dozen or so
of these protagonists have worked on a young mind, they are
apt to leave it in hard knots for life. I wish they had
sold me Latin and History as a lark.
I would seek
out more teachers who inspire relaxation and fun. I had
a few of them, fortunately, and I figure it was they who kept
me from going entirely to the dogs. From them I learned
how to gather what few scraggly daisies I have gathered along
life's cindery pathway.
If I had my
life to live over, I would start barefooted a little earlier
in the spring and stay that way a little later in the
fall. I would play hooky more. I would shoot more paper
wads at my teachers. I would have more dogs. I
would keep later hours. I'd have more sweethearts.
I would fish more. I would go to more circuses. I
would go to more dances. I would ride on more
merry-go-rounds. I would be carefree as long as I could,
or at least until I got some care--instead of having my cares
in advance.
More errors
are made solemnly than in fun. The rubs of family life
come in moments of intense seriousness rather that in moments
of light-heartedness. If nations--to magnify my point--declared international carnivals instead of international
war, how much better that would be!
G.K.
Chesterton once said, "A characteristic of the great
saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because
they can take themselves lightly. One 'settles down'
into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a
gay self-forgetfulness. A person falls into a 'brown
study,' and reaches up at a blue sky."
In a world in
which practically everybody else seems to be consecrated to
the gravity of the situation, I would rise to glorify the
levity of the situation. For I agree with Will Durant
that "gaiety is wiser than wisdom."
I doubt,
however, that I'll do much damage with my creed. The
opposition is too strong. There are too many serious
people trying to get everybody else to be too darned serious.
Don Herold |
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Learn as if you were going to
live forever.
Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
unattributed
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To learn new habits is
everything,
for it is to reach
the substance of
life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Henri
Frederic
Amiel
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The
only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If
I had
to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes,
only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead
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Suppose we want to realize how a marathon runner feels:
if we
run two blocks, or two miles or five miles, we will know something
about running those distances, but we won’t yet know anything
about running a marathon. We can recite theories about marathons;
we can describe tables about the physiology of marathon runners;
we can pile up endless information about marathon-running; but that
doesn’t mean we know what it is. We can only know when we are
the one doing it. We only know our lives when we experience them
directly, instead of dreaming about how they might
be if we did this, or had that.
Charlotte J. Beck
Everyday Zen
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life - life
2 - life 4 - life 5
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This is another day!
Are its eyes
blurred with maudlin grief
for any wasted past? A
thousand thousand failures
shall not daunt! Let dust
clasp dust, death, death; I am alive!
Don Marquis
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Life is made up not necessarily
of great sacrifices or high-level duties
but of little things. The smiles, the kindnesses, the
commitments and
obligations and responsibilities that are given habitually and
lovingly
are the blessings that win and preserve the heart and bring comfort
to one's self as we as to others. This is the ministry
of service performed by every useful life.
John Marks
Templeton
Worldwide
Laws of Life
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We get to think of life as an
inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens
only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. . . .
How
many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Jacqueline Bisset
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Our
life is what our thoughts make it. |
Do every act of
your life as if it were your last. |
In
a word, your life is short. You must make the most of the
present with the aid of reason and justice. |
Since
it is possible that you may be quitting life this very moment,
govern every act and thought accordingly. |
Marcus
Aurelius |
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In
the true reality of life. . . all things are equal, transcending
distinctions
and differences between subject and object, self and others, mind and
body, the spiritual and the material. In its true aspect, life
is infinitely
expansive and eternal, without beginning or end. Life is
dynamic; it is
wisdom and compassion; it embodies the principle of the indivisibility
of
life and death; it is a universal law. The cosmos is not so big
that life
cannot embrace it, nor a particle of matter so small that life
cannot be contained within it.
Daisaku Ikeda
Buddhism
Day by Day
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The three hardest tasks in the
world are neither physical feats
nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love
for hate, to include the excluded,
and to say “I was wrong.”
Sydney J. Harris
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All animals, except man, know
that
the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
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The
most instructive experiences are those of everyday life.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Those
who have a why to live for can bear almost any how.
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The necessary premise is
that a person is somehow more than
his or her
"characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes,
and
constructions which it
pleases us to call "My Life." We have
grounds to hope that a
Life is something
more than a cloud of
particles, mere facticity. Go through what is
comprehensible
and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.
Saul Bellow
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Life is not a series of gig lamps
symmetrically arranged; life is a
luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from
the beginning of consciousness to the end.
Virginia Woolf
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The truth of life is that every year we
get farther away from the essence that is born
within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not
so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get
crippled.
People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in
this world of
crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from
us. You
don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something
but you’re not
sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you
“sir.” It just happens.
Robert R.McCammon
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The art of
life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
Okakura Kakuzo
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I have given up
the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more--
simply a human. . . . We are not true humans, but beings who live by a
civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us.
No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our
calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I
am
not happy--yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I
live, I don't
care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom.
Albert Schweitzer
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life - life
2 - life 4 - life 5
- life 6
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quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
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up for your free daily meditation
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No one can live my life for me. If I am
wise, I shall begin today
to build my own truer and better world from within.
Horatio W. Dresser
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It is futile to wish for a long life,
and then to give so little care to living well.
Thomas a Kempis
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The beauty is
forever there before us, forever piping to us, and we are
forever failing to dance. We could not help but dance if we could see
things as they really are. Then we should kiss both hands to Fate and
fling our bodies, hearts, minds, and souls into life with a glorious
abandonment, an extravagant, delighted loyalty, knowing that our
wildest
enthusiasm cannot more than brush the hem of the real
beauty
and joy and wonder that are always there.
Margaret Prescott Montague
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What is life but the flower
or the fruit which falls, when
ripe, but yet which ever fears the untimely frost?
Dhammapada
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Our critical day is not the very day of
our death; but
the whole course of our life.
John Donne
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To be what we
are, and to become what we are
capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
Robert Louis
Stevenson
Familiar Studies of Men and Books
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How often we hear people give expression to the thought that
they don't get much out of life anyway! Now this very spirit of
trying to see how much they can get out of life is what causes
them to get so little. It is the people who put the most into life
that get the most out of it. A farmer might as well sit still and
see how much he can get out of his farm without sowing and
planting. It is the people who give the most to life who get the
most out of it. With many people life seems something to
plunder instead of to cultivate to the utmost.
Just like the farmer who would till a particular piece of land
from which he is trying to win a prize, you must put as much
as you can into life, make it just as rich as possible. Put love
and contentment into it, cheerfulness and unselfish service, then
you will not go around complaining that you get so little out of
life, that the world has no reward to offer you.
Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living (1913)
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I think that life is difficult.
People have challenges. Family members
get sick, people get older, you don’t always get the job or the
promotion that you want. You have conflicts in your life. And really,
life is about your resilience and your ability to go through your life and
all of the ups and downs with a positive attitude.
Jennifer Hyman
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However
confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be
who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
Muriel Rukeyser
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