Active Life Quotes

For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends. ~ Thomas Aquinas

We need to find God and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees and flowers and grass - grow in silence. See the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. ~ Mother Teresa

When I want to move, I remember death, how it is ultimate and inevitable, and pure. Then I am free to move properly in life. It's like a man who wants to think, going and standing in front of a window. The space purifys ones' soul. And death is a window to me, with the darkness outside. And when I stand there, looking out, then the world and its active life seems only like a roomful of racket and light behind me, where I am taking part for a time, but not staying for long. It does not contain me and confine me. When I stand peacefully looking out on death, what is true in my soul disengages itself and is free and clear and untrammeled, I know what to do, I am sure, and free, and glad. Then I can turn into the world again"...

"When one stands in front of the darkness, and knows that one's own life will pass away there also, into the darkness...then, in the peace that accompanies this knowledge, one can declare simply that the existing world of man is base and wrong, and must go, we know that our lives contain the inception of a new earth.."

..."Remembering death, I know the life of the world as it is now is not living, it is a bad process of dying. And what we must live for is a new world of life. It doesn't matter when we die, so long as we live fulfilling the deepest desire that is in us. And a life which is a denial of the deepest desire is much worse than any death, it is a sheer lie."

"If one accepts death and knows that nothing can take u ~ D.H. Lawrence

The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation. ~ Josef Pieper

The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fathers and teachers, what is hell? I think it is the suffering of one who can no longer love. Once, in the infinity of existence unmeasurable by time or space, a spiritual creature, upon its appearance on earth, is given the power to say: "I am and I love." Once, and only for a moment, is that creature given the knowledge of active, living love, and this is why that creature was given life on earth, and with it, time and space. And what happens? The privileged creature rejects that priceless gift, fails to appreciate it, does not even like it, sneers at it, and remains unmoved. When such a creature leaves the earth, sees Abraham, and talks with him as in the parable about Lazarus and the rich man--when he is already in sight of heaven and is allowed into the presence of the Lord, he is filled with suffering at the thought that he will appear before the Lord never having loved and will be brought into the presence of those who have loved him but whose love he has scorned. For now he sees clearly and says to himself: "I now have the knowledge and I am yearning for love; but now that my earthly life is over, there can be no self-abnegation, no sacrifice in love, and Abraham will not come to me again and bring me even a tiny drop of living water (that is, the gift of life on earth, the active life which I possessed before); since I will never again be given life and time, I will never be able to quench the fiery thirst for love that burns within me, because I scorned love while ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

At thirty a man steps out of the darkness and wasteland of preparation into active life it is the time to show oneself, the time of fulfillment. ~ Thomas Mann

Restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active, life is alert. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Man's activity consists in either a making or doing. Both of these aspects of the active life depend for their correction upon the contemplative life (that is, the Hero). ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy

I can only run the rate in which my heart beats. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Remember that, as the receiver is as bad as the thief, so the hearer of scandal is a sharer in the guilt of it. If there were no listening ears there would be no talebearing tongues. While you are a buyer of ill wares the demand will create the supply, and the factories of falsehood will be working full time. No one wishes to become a creator of lies, and yet he who hears slanders with pleasure and believes them with readiness will hatch many a brood into active life. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer. ~ Alvin Lustig

Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life. ~ Dale Carnegie

Donald Watson, who founded The Vegan Society in 1944 and who lived a healthy, active life until passing on in 2005, maintained that dairy products, such as milk, eggs, and cheese, were every bit as cruel and exploitive of sentient animal life as was slaughtering animals for their flesh: "The unquestionable cruelty associated with the production of dairy produce has made it clear that lactovegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh-eating and a truly humane, civilised diet, and we think, therefore, that during our life on earth we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the 'full journey.'" He also avoided wearing leather, wool or silk and used a fork, rather than a spade in his gardening to avoid killing worms.

Let us instil in others the reverence or life that Donald Watson had and that he passed on to us. ~ Gary L. Francione

Untrained warriors are soon killed on the battlefield; so also persons untrained in the art of preserving their inner peace are quickly riddled by the bullets of worry and restlessness in active life. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Society is the true sphere of human virtue. In social, active life, difficulties will perpetually be met with; restraints of many kinds will be necessary; and studying to behave right in respect of these is a discipline of the human heart, useful to others, and improving to itself. Suffering is no duty, but where it is necessary to avoid guilt, or to do good; nor pleasure a crime, but where it strengthens the influence of bad inclinations, or lessens the generous activity of virtue. ~ Elizabeth Carter

I burnt for the more active life of the world--for the more exciting toils of a literary career--for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate's surplice. I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds--my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. ~ Charlotte Bronte

It was a relief to see his father, who'd always been an unfailing source of reassurance and comfort. They clasped hands in a firm shake, and used their free arms to pull close for a moment. Such demonstrations of affection weren't common among fathers and sons of their rank, but then, they'd never been a conventional family.
After a few hearty thumps on the back, Sebastian drew back and glanced over him with the attentive concern that hearkened to Gabriel's earliest memories. Not missing the traces of weariness on his face, his father lightly tousled his hair the way he had when he was a boy. "You haven't been sleeping."
"I went carousing with friends for most of last night," Gabriel admitted. "It ended when we were all too drunk to see a hole through a ladder."
Sebastian grinned and removed his coat, tossing the exquisitely tailored garment to a nearby chair. "Reveling in the waning days of bachelorhood, are we?"
"It would be more accurate to say I'm thrashing like a drowning rat."
"Same thing." Sebastian unfastened his cuffs and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. An active life at Heron's Point, the family estate in Sussex, had kept him as fit and limber as a man half his age. Frequent exposure to the sunlight had gilded his hair and darkened his complexion, making his pale blue eyes startling in their brightness.
While other men of his generation had become staid and settled, the duke was more vigorous than ever, in part because his youngest s ~ Lisa Kleypas

It is by far the best plan, therefore, to mingle leisure with business, whenever chance impediments or the state of public affairs forbid one's leading an active life: for one is never so cut off from all pursuits as to find no room left for honorable action. ~ Seneca.

Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet. ~ Victor Hugo

In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world. The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. Mary no longer loves the contemplative life and Martha no longer loves the active life, Leah is sterile, Rachel has a carnal eye, Cato visits brothels, Lucretius becomes a woman. Everything is on the wrong path. In those days, thank God, I acquired from my master the desire to learn and a sense of the straight way, which remains even when the path is tortuous. ~ Umberto Eco

If you keep an active life, you stay young. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Rest is not the answer
Activity and therapy help healing most ~ Joerg Teichmann

The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the discourses of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. ~ William Edward Hartpole Lecky

If we live a sedentary life, you're going to be depressed and lack confidence. So get out there and get active. ~ Jessie Pavelka

As the proud father of two teens and past Chairman to the Presidents Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, I am committed to educating parents and especially young people on ways to live a long, healthy and active life. ~ Lee Haney

he would expatiate with great vehemence on the misery of idle and lazy habits; and would enforce upon them the necessity of an active life, by sending them supperless to bed. On ~ Charles Dickens

After the day's active life, we spend at least a few hours quietly to develop our aesthetic, theoretical, and spiritual understanding of the way of life. By either reading, writing, performing, or thinking and meditating, we should continuously refine our personality and deepen our understanding of art, literature, science, philosophy, religion, and various other arts. ~ Michio Kushi

An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete ... Its motor consequences are what clinch it ... ~ William James

Though I may not be a king in my future life, so much the better: I shall nevertheless live an active life and, on top of it, earn less ingratitude. ~ Frederick The Great

I'm lucky enough to lead a very active life, so I'm always on the go. ~ Blake Lively

even skeptics have granted and recognized His unparalleled life and impact. Here, for example, is an opinion from a highly respected scholar, the famed historian W. E. H. Lecky: The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.1 ~ Ravi Zacharias

It's not enough that i know all that's in me, everyone else must know it, too: Pierre, and that girl who wanted to fly into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life is not only for myself; so that they don't live like that girl, independently of my life, but so that it is reflected in everyone, and they all live together with me! ~ Leo Tolstoy

In the active life all the vices are first of all to be removed by the practice of good works, so that in the contemplative life a man may, with now purified mental gaze, pass on to the contemplation of the Divine Light. ~ Isidore Of Seville

You will boost your productivity with active exercise. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Few men have led a more active life - bodily or mentally - from a constitutional anxiety for regularity, precision, and order, during fifty years' business career, from which I had retired. ~ William Banting

If a person leads an 'active' life, as Wiggs had, if a person has goals, ideals, a cause to fight for, then that person is distracted, temporarily, from paying a whole lot of attention to the heavy scimitar that hangs by a mouse hair just about his or her head. We, each of us, have a ticket to ride, and if the trip be interesting (if it's dull, we have only ourselves to blame), then we relish the landscape (how quickly it whizzes by!), interact with our fellow travelers, pay frequent visits to the washrooms and concession stands, and hardly ever hold up the ticket to the light where we can read its plainly stated destination: The Abyss.
Yet, ignore it though we might in our daily toss and tussle, the fact of our impending death is always there, just behind the draperies, or, more accurately, inside our sock, like a burr that we can never quite extract. If one has a religious life, one can rationalize one's slide into the abyss; if one has a sense of humor (and a sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised), one can minimalize it through irony and wit. Ah, but the specter is there, night and day, day in and day out, coloring with its chalk of gray almost everything we do. And a lot of what we do is done, subconsciously, indirectly, to avoid the thought of death, or to make ourselves so unexpendable through our accomplishments that death will hesitate to take us, or, when the scimitar finally falls, to insure that we 'live on' in the mem ~ Tom Robbins

The anorexic is the fuse nakedly exposed to the direct power of modern media, a psyche whose wiring has no insulation. The anorexic is an analog to the ideologue, who is likewise devoid of common sense, independent ego, culture, intuitive intelligence, etc.: all the ideologue has to orient himself by is the formalist or abstractivist directives inlaid in modern mass-culture. Both are forms of the True Believer, minds in whom factors of self-active life are reduced to negligibility and pathos reigns. ~ Kenny Smith

I have always preferred the contemplative to the active life. I prefer the freedom to see matters from several viewpoints, to appreciate ironies, and indeed to change my opinion as I learn something new. To be politically active means to surrender this freedom. I say nothing against activism for others. It is only through the committed that necessary changes come. But each to his own path. [A Cautious Case for Socialism, Dissent Magazine, 1978] ~ Kenneth J. Arrow

We can't avoid age. However, we can avoid some aging. Continue to do things. Be active. Life is fantastic in the way it adjusts to demands; if you use your muscles and mind, they stay there much longer. ~ Charles H. Townes

Taoism, on the other hand, is generally a pursuit of older men, and especially of men who are retiring from active life in the community. Their retirement from society is a kind of outward symbol of an inward liberation from the bounds of conventional patterns of thought and conduct. For Taoism concerns itself with unconventional knowledge, with the understanding of life directly, instead of in the abstract, linear terms of representational thinking. ~ Alan W. Watts

In a way, Amelia Kindl had been right when she once said to me, 'I saved your life.' She was right, but not in the way she meant. When she saw the suicide note on Elise Dembowski's Super-Secret Diary and called my father, she set into motion the chain of events that led me to being in the DJ booth tonight. And that, in a way, had saved my life. ~ Leila Sales

The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated. ~ Randolph Bourne

The future is of greater interest to me than the past, since that is where I intend to spend the rest of my life. ~ Albert Einstein

When you let people into the inner sanctum of your life, you risk having them see the heart of you. (from Vanishing Acts) ~ Jodi Picoult

Dear Friend, Thank you for your thoughtfulness. I am so lucky to have you in my life, especially after that time I hit you with my car and salted the earth around your house. ~ Penny Reid

Women, as well as men, in all ages and in all places, have danced on the earth, danced the life dance, danced joy, danced grief, danced despair, and danced hope. Literally and metaphorically, by their very lives. ~ Margaret Laurence

For me to accept baptism, I had to believe in Christ's reality - in the reality not just of his life but also of his miracles and death and resurrection. But how could I? Such things don't happen. Look around you. There are no miracles. There can be no resurrection. The clockwork world is all in all. But such things don't happen, I knew now, was the ultimate irrational prejudice of the human mind: the belief that the symbols of reality are more real than the reality they symbolize. That's us all over. We believe that money is more valuable than the work it represents, that sex is more essential than the love it expresses, that an actor is more admirable than the hero he portrays, that flesh is more alive than spirit. That's the whole nature of our deluded lives, the cause of so much of our misery. ~ Andrew Klavan

She met the pleasurable things of life with frank, open appreciation, and against distasteful conditions she rebelled. Dissimulation was as foreign to her nature as guile to the breast of a babe, and her rebellious outbreaks, by no means rare, had hitherto been quite open and aboveboard. ~ Kate Chopin

Selling Atari when I did - I think that's my biggest regret. And I probably should have gotten back heavily into the games business in the late Eighties. But I was operating under this theory at the time that the way to have an interesting life was to reinvent yourself every five or six years. ~ Nolan Bushnell

Sometimes when I've thought o' my life, and the little pleasure I've had in it, I've believed that, maybe, I was one of those doomed to die by the falling of a star from heaven. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

The goods of the body are food and drink, sleep, clothing, and shelter. These are goods we need because they are indispensable for sustaining life. To be without them in sufficient quantity is a life-threating deprivation. To possess them is not only necessary, but also a source of pleasure and enjoyment.
The goods of the mind are information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom. We seek these goods not just in order to live, but in order to live well. Possessing them lifts us above the plane of animal existence, for these goods enhance our existence as human beings, as well as providing enjoyment and pleasure, ~ Mortimer J. Adler

What do you call a planet where bad guys stroll through life with success draped around their shoulders like a King's cloak, while random horrors are visited upon the innocent heads of children? I call it Earth. ~ Jordan Sonnenblick

Guess that's one of the keys in life. Knowing when to hold on, when to let go. ~ Melissa Tagg

Writing is what we do. What else could I want in a life partner than someone who knows and shares what I do? ~ Clark Blaise

In life ... everyone hurts over something. But you can't hurt others because you do! Always try to help others and if you can't ... Don't ever hurt them! ~ Timothy Pina

Wherever I go, I just try to show normal life. If the work helps to dispel stereotypes, it's because I seek not to portray the extremities of a place, but the vast majority of people who are quite normal and are having normal life experiences. ~ Brandon Stanton

What are you? Do you know? What you are is you're always trying to smooth everything over. What you are is always trying to be moderate. What you are is never telling the truth if you think it's going to hurt somebody's feelings. What you are is you're always compromising. What you are is always complacent. What you are is always trying to find the bright side of things. The one with the manners. The one who abides everything patiently. The one with ultimate decorum. The boy who never breaks the code. ~ Philip Roth

Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, I've no regrets. ~ Roman Payne

Take sex, for instance.'
'What do you want me to do with it?'
'Try to be serious for a moment. Take the sex life of our father.'
[ ... ]
Even after a couple of brandies he felt extremely reluctant to discuss sex and his father. 'It's something I'd rather not think about,' he said. 'We all come into existence as a result of a momentary embrace by our parents which find impossible to imagine. [ ... ] We all assume we're the result of our own particular immaculate conception. ~ John Mortimer

I didn't take the decision [to get married] lightly. I ventured into it realistically. But life takes you places you wouldn't have expected. I'm really content with what was in the cards for me. ~ Mandy Moore

When I go to the shore, I take along the poems of Pablo Neruda. I suppose it's because the poems are simultaneously lush and ripe and kind of lazy, yet throbbing with life - like summer itself. ~ Tom Robbins

When the time comes for you to leave this earth, if it doesn't become a lesser place with your absence, then you have wasted your life. ~ Shaun Hick

Beauty draws us in. We can't stop looking or listening or touching. It takes us outside ourselves and it motivates us. It's essential to life and to happiness. ~ Nancy Etcoff

LIFE IS STRANGE"
"Strange, life is strange, life is strange,
Oh life is strange.
O god, life is strange,
People come and people go,
Some move fast and some move slow,
No, no, no, no, no.
O god, life is good,
Some are fat and some are thin,
Some don't even ask you how you've been,
No, no, no, no, no.
Strange, life is strange, life is strange.
Oh life is strange.
O god, life is strange,
Some are fast and some are slow,
Some believe, me don't even know,
No, no, no, no, no.
Strange life is strange, life is strange.
Oh my life is strange ~ Marc Bolan

Life is just too short, too unpredictable and too complicated. Be happy no matter what, a smile sometimes is all you need ~ Shahid Kapoor

The real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively, in their nerve ends, not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified, and inescapably part of the society we have created. ~ Al Alvarez

But the lost one is with you.
Her tenderness strengthens you,
Her gaiety uplifts you,
Her honor purifies you.
More than memory,
The lost one is found. ~ Gail Carson Levine

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away - an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. ~ C. G. Jung

If you're lonely when he's around, happiest when he's sad, and angry when he's overjoyed, get a new life. Without him. ~ Ace Antonio Hall

When I was in theater I was forever trying to inhabit a space which puts yourself under the microscope as an actor and your personality and your take on life, but actually through another portal of a character. ~ Andy Serkis

He wanted to wake up every morning to her. Go to sleep with his body wrapped tightly around hers. He wanted her to have his child - his children. He knew he wanted to live out the rest of his life with her by his side and when he died, he wanted to die in her arms. ~ Christine Feehan

Gaining my education from practical experience certainly benefited me. If I had gone on to be a lawyer, my life wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting. ~ Lindsay Fox

Flidais nods in approval. "Respect for life. Good."
I want to ask where her respect for life is, why she thinks it is all right to treat animals like puppets and force me to kill one of them in some sort of sick game. ~ Kevin Hearne

Get your ass into my trailer." "And why would I go into your place?" "To save your life." "There's a new line. Is this some elaborate scheme to get in my pants?" she huffed with her hands on her hips. ~ Eve Langlais

Such dreams provide this temporary illusion of a life that has meaning. ~ Anna Jae

A short, glorious life in service of a greater good - say, the life of the Spartans at Thermopylae, or the pilots in the Battle of Britain, of whom Winston Churchill said 'Never have so many owed so much to so few,' - that is worth praising. But for glory alone? I think not. ~ Tim O'Reilly

Victory" in TIbet means liberation from cyclic existence (life, drama, aging, disease, death) ~ Wake Breathe Love

I freely will the best choice, thus willing the same will ~ Serge Jerkezian