more quotes, quotations and passages on life

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"Just living is not enough," said the
butterfly. "One must have sunshine,
freedom, and a little flower."

Hans Christian Andersen

What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. Chief Isapwo Muksika Crowfoot

Is there not a certain satisfaction in the fact that natural limits are set to the life of the individual, so that at the conclusion it may appear as a work of art? Albert Einstein Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. Abraham Heschel

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. Frederick Buechner

Living our life means that we take our life day to day and moment to moment, always trying to deepen our understanding of what it means to be human. Life will never be perfect, and we will always be in a state of moving towards completeness. Don, 84, put it this way: "You have lived the life you have lived. When we accept the life we have lived, then we can begin to be whole." He echoed an often-heard theme: When we judge our life we diminish ourselves. The more we can eliminate all need to compare, compete, grade, and judge our lives, the closer we get to wisdom. John Izzo

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must
have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.
We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that
this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.

Marie Curie

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In months of sun so live that in months of rain you will still be happy.

unattributed

All men and women are born, live, suffer, and die; what distinguishes
us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about
worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come
about. . . . We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents.
We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the
immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us,
choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death.
But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.

Joseph Epstein

You have to count on living every single day in a way
you believe will make you feel good about your life--so that
even if it were over tomorrow, you'd be content with yourself.

Jane Seymour

It is a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept
anything but the best you very often get it.

Somerset Maugham

Why do we protect children from life? It's no wonder that we become afraid to live.
We're not told what life really is. We're not told that life is joy and wonder and magic
and even rapture, if you can get involved enough. We're not told that life is also pain,
misery, despair, unhappiness, and tears. I don't know about you, but I don't want
to miss any of it. I want to embrace life, and I want to find out what it's all about.
I wouldn't want to go through life without knowing what it is to cry.

Leo Buscaglia

One is responsible for one's own life.
Passivity provides no protection.

Madeleine Kunin

Live now, believe me, wait not
till tomorrow; gather the roses of life today.

Pierre de Ronsard

Life is not intended to be simply a round of work, no matter how
interesting and important that work may be. A moment's pause
to watch the glory of a sunrise or a sunset is soul satisfying,
while a bird's song will set the steps to music all day long.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.

Joseph Campbell

Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive.
One must never, for whatever reason, turn one's back on life.

Eleanor Roosevelt

life - life 2 - life 3 - life 4 - life 6

It is not how many years we live, but what we do with them.

Catherine Booth

Life is a great school for the development of character, and all,
through strife and struggle, vice and virtue, success and failure,
we are slowly but surely learning the lessons of wisdom.

James Allen

The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy
is that most of us die before we are thus born.

Erich Fromm

Accept every event in your life as natural, whether it is life, death,
birth, marriage, goings or comings. Accept everyone. Do not argue.
Do not question. Do not doubt. Do not judge. You will find that
each step will lead on to another one, and when you start living this
way there will be great rejoicing in the heavens because
a prodigal son or daughter is beginning to return home.

Ronald Beesley

Learn this great secret of life: What people call interruption or disturbance
to their routine is just as much a part of living as the routine. To split life into
two parts, one called routine and the other called interruption,
is to be caught between them.

Vernon Howard

How easily we can forget how precious life is! So long as we can remember,
we've just been here, being alive. Unlike other things for which we have
a good comparison--black to white, day to night, good to bad--we are
so immersed in life that we can see it only in the context of itself.
We don't see life as compared to anything, to not-being, for example,
to never having been born. Life just is. But life itself is a gift. It's a
compliment just being born: to feel, breathe, think, play, dance, sing,
work, make love, for this particular lifetime. Today, let's give thanks for life.
For life itself. For simply being born!

Daphne Rose Kingma

Warm, eager, living life--to be rooted in life--to learn, to desire, to know,
to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less.
That is what I must try for.

Katherine Mansfield

Remember, life is for living and learning. So listen to your life and the
lessons it offers. What choices must you make this day to help you move
forward? Make your list of the things you can do right now to create what
you want and begin to do the work. You can say yes to happiness, wholeness,
and prosperity. You can live fully and creatively. You can
claim your power to choose. Why not claim it now?

Susan L. Taylor

I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity;
and I saw that, not two or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had
so understood the meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die.
All these people were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly
labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw
in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.

Lev Tolstoy

The complexities of life situations are really not
as complicated as we tend to experience them.

Chögyam Trungpa

There is no use in one person attempting to tell another what the meaning of life is.
It involves too intimate an awareness. A major part of the meaning of life is
contained in the very discovering of it. It is an ongoing experience of growth
that involves a deepening contact with reality. To speak as though it were an
objective knowledge, like the date of the war of 1812, misses the point
altogether. The meaning of life is indeed objective when it is reached, but the
way to it is by a path of subjectivities. . . . The meaning of life
cannot be told; it has to happen to a person.

Ira Progoff

Funny, isn't it, how your whole life goes by while you think
you're only planning the way you're going to live it?

Edna Ferber

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Fear less, hope more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more;
hate less, love more, and all good things are yours.

Swedish proverb

Life never comes to a closure; life is process, even mystery. Life is
known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with
change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be
no security, but only adventure.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other
discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly.
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny,
denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful,
evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
Every moment is a golden one for those who have the vision to recognize it as such.

Henry Miller

Stop hiding! Stop holding yourself back and playing yourself down!
Stop worrying about how you look and what people are saying. Stop
listening to what people are saying and trying to find out if they are
whispering about you. Stop waiting for someone to tell you that you
are okay or to make you feel special. Life is special! It is a special
gift. This is your life! Now take your gift and live it out in the open!
Decide today that you are going to live out loud!

Iyanla Vanzant

If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with
yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way
things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.

Lao Tzu

It's the simple things, like a glowing sunset, the sound of a running
stream or the fresh smell in a meadow that cause us to pause and
marvel at the wonder of life, to contemplate its meaning and
significance. Who can hold an autumn leaf in their hand, or sift the
warm white sand on the beach, and not wonder at the Creator of it all?

Wendy Moore

Life is the ability to start over again.

Joan Chittister

Life is for most of us a continuous process of getting used to things we hadn't expected.

Martha Lupton

Life need not be easy, provided only that it is not empty.

Lise Meitner

Life is easier than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.

Kathleen Norris

This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the
whirlwind.

Gwendolyn Brooks

A thin line separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy,
humor and hurt. Our lives constantly walk that line. When we
slip off on one side or the other, we’re taken by surprise. But
who said there wouldn’t be surprises? Knowing God just means
that all the rules will be fair; at the end of our life drama,
we’ll see that. We never know how things will turn out, but
if we know with certainty they will make sense regardless
of how they turn out, we’re on to something.

Barbara Johnson

The mere sense of living is joy enough.

Emily Dickinson

Life is a gift from God, an unlimited series of opportunities
to find the good in ourselves and others. There is good
in everything, if we are willing to see it.

Alan Cohen

Just consider, my friend, whether a pure spirit and virtue are anything other
than saving your life and being saved. Perhaps we need to discard the idea
of longevity and cease loving this life, instead committing these things to God and,
believing that no one ever escapes destiny, to consider, with that in mind,
how we may live the best possible life in the time that remains.

Marcus Aurelius

If I Had My Life to Live Over
Erma Bombeck

Someone asked me the other day if I had my life to live over would I change anything.

My answer was no, but then I thought about it and changed my mind.

If I had my life to live over again I would have waxed less and listened more.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy and complaining about the shadow over my feet, I'd have cherished every minute of it and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was to be my only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.

I would have eaten popcorn in the "good" living room and worried less about the dirt when you lit the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would have burnt the pink candle that was sculptured like a rose before it melted while being stored.

I would have sat cross-legged on the lawn with my children and never worried about grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television. . . and more while watching real life.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband which I took for granted.

I would have eaten less cottage cheese and more ice cream.

I would have gone to bed when I was sick, instead of pretending the Earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for a day.

I would never have bought ANYTHING just because it was practical/wouldn't show soil/ guaranteed to last a lifetime.

When my child kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now, go get washed up for dinner."

There would have been more I love yous. . . more I'm sorrys. . . more I'm listenings. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it. . . look at it and really see it. . . try it on. . . live it. . . exhaust it. . . and never give that minute back until there was nothing left of it.