All Living Beings Quotes

The will to live that possesses us to create medicine, to become firefighters or teachers, is the same will to live that is woven into all living beings. ~ Ian Somerhalder

Life gives us many challenges and between those challenges we have to learn to choose happiness. Happiness lies in little things of our lives like kindness, gratitude, learning new things, caring for all living beings on this planet. Life can become a beautiful journey with little effort. ~ Purvi Raniga

All life is a complex of systems. Some creatures perform as networks (like mycelia), some as superorganisms (like ants and bees), some as individuals that cooperate (like humans, ravens, and wolves). But all living beings, as far as we know, have some kind of subjectivity that connects them to other subjectivities. ~ Julie J. Morley

If you know that whatever is made inevitable breaks down, you needn't seek too hard for achievement. If you know that all living beings inevitably die, you needn't work too hard on health lore. ~ Zicheng Hong

From the Buddhist point of view, all living beings -- that is, beings with feelings, experiences, and sensations -- are considered equal. Human beings can live without eating meat. As human beings, I think that deep down our nature tends towards vegetarianism and leads us to do everything in our power to prevent harming other species. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Once we experience and feel this inter-dependence of all living beings,we will cease to hurt, humiliate, exploit and kill another. We will want to free all sentient beings from suffering. This is karuna, compassion, which in turn gives rise to the responsibility to create happiness and its causes for all. ~ Suresh Jindal

When you forget what you ultimately stand for, you rejoice in blinding ignorance. Missing the bigger picture for the near pleasure is what humans and all living beings stand for. I guess there is no alternate way either. Because it is after all a game that all are destined to play until they end up dead. ~ Rakesh Ranjan

Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomorphism has gained currency. Bacteria are imagined to mimic "economic" behavior and to engage in internecine competition for the scarce oxygen available in their environment. A cosmic struggle among ever more complex forms of life has become the anthropic foundational myth of the scientific age. ~ Ivan Illich

Live and allow others to live; hurt no one; life is dear to all living beings. ~ Mahavira

We made a sacred covenant to follow the Creator's life plan at all times, which includes the responsibility of taking care of this land and life for His divine purpose. We have never made treaties with any foreign nation, including the United States, but for many centuries we have honored this Sacred Agreement. Our goals are not to gain political control, monetary wealth nor military power, but rather to pray and to promote the welfare of all living beings and to preserve the world in a natural way. ~ Thomas Banyacya

All living beings are spiritual beings because all of life breathes. Breath is an indication that spirit is present. ~ Sharon Gannon

We can bring heaven on the earth when we have compassion for all living beings. ~ Amit Ray

All living beings have Buddha nature and can become Buddhas. ~ Gautama Buddha

All living beings, things that move, are equally important, whether they are human beings, dogs, birds, fish, trees, ants, weeds, rivers, wind or rain. To stay healthy and strong, life must have clean air, clear water and pure food. If deprived of these things, life will cycle to the next level, or as the system says, 'die'. ~ John Africa

Have you ever wondered if death is the same for all living beings, be they animals, human beings included, or plants, from the grass you walk on to the hundred-meter-tall sequoiadendron giganteum, will the death that kills a man who knows he's going to die be the same as that of a horse who never will. ~ Jose Saramago

See all living beings as your father or mother, and love them as if you were their child ~ Atisa

When we want a cup of tea our main wish is to drink tea, but to fulfill this wish we naturally develop the secondary wish to find a cup. In a similar way, the main wish of those who have great compassion is to protect all living beings from their suffering, but to fulfill this wish they know they must first attain Buddhahood themselves and so they naturally develop the secondary wish to attain enlightenment. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

We will discover through our own experience that this precious mind of love is the real wish-granting jewel, because it fulfills the pure wishes of both ourself and all living beings. ~ Kelsang Gyatso

By far the single greatest danger facing humankind - in fact, all living beings on our planet - is the threat of nuclear destruction. ~ Dalai Lama

Yes, karma propels us into all kinds of unexpected situations," His Holiness said. "This is another reason we should behave with love and compassion toward all living beings. We never know in what circumstances we will meet up with them again. Sometimes even in this same lifetime. ~ David Michie

Great compassion penetrates into the marrow of the bone. It is the support of all living beings. Like the love of a parent for an only child, the tenderness of the Compassionate One is all-pervasive. ~ Akkineni Nagarjuna

God is a tremendous supporter of creation, especially of all living beings. ~ Thomas Keating

The reason that people start wars is because they still believe in their separation from life. But when you experience the wholeness with all living beings, you understand that hurting somebody else is just hurting yourself as we are all one on the spiritual level. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Spinoza spoke of vitality as the purest virtue, the only virtue. The drive to persist, to flourish, he said, is the absolute quality shared by all living beings. What happens, however, when vitality is inverted, and instead of flourishing, one is driven to eat oneself alive? ~ Michael Greenberg

Compassionate AI algorithms are focused to feel connected to all living beings and our planet, and make this universe a friendly place for both human and machine to thrive. ~ Amit Ray

Solitude is happiness for one who is content, who has heard the Dhamma and clearly sees. Non-affliction is happiness in the world - harmlessness towards all living beings. ~ Gautama Buddha

Whatever talent a person has should be dedicated to the rest of humanity - indeed to all living beings. Therein lies fulfillment. All men are kin. They are of the same likeness, the same build, molded out of the same material, with the same divine essence in each. Service to man will help your divinity to blossom, for it will gladden your heart and make you feel that life has been worth while. Service to man is service to God, for He is in every man, and every living being, in every stone and stump. Offer your talents at the feet of God. Let every act be a flower, free from the creeping worms of envy and egoism and full of the fragrance of love and sacrifice. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion - towards ourselves and towards all living beings. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I do not think about converting others to Buddhism or merely furthering the Buddhist cause. Instead, I try to think of how I as a Buddhist can contribute to the happiness of all living beings. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Harmony and One-ness with all living beings. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Liberty creates an environment where all living beings within a society have an equal opportunity to exercise freedom. An equal opportunity to exercise freedom would further infer that, in liberty, living beings have equal access to knowledge and experience. Knowledge and experience are both inseparable from freedom. Liberty is balanced societal freedom and may also be considered balanced knowledge and experience. With equal access to knowledge and experience, living beings have an equal opportunity to enhance their abilities. Liberty is perceived as true freedom because it maximizes the opportunities for most living beings within a society. ~ C W Newman

For your temporary comfort, don't permanently kill the innocent life of all living beings on the earth, the plastic ~ 'SON Of GOD' P.S.Jagadeesh Kumar

Here is a beautiful dream: A never-ending journey! The holy purpose of science is to realise this dream for all living beings! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Since all living beings are bound by their craving for existence, you must begin by finding the determination to be free. ~ Je Tsongkhapa

All living beings have experience of pleasure and pain, and we are among them. What makes human beings different is that we have a powerful intelligence and a much greater ability to achieve happiness and avoid suffering. Real happiness and friendship come not from money or even knowledge, but from warm-heartednes s. Once we recognize this we will be more inclined to cultivate it. ~ Dalai Lama

Our task is to widen our circle of compassion to include all living beings and all of nature ~ Albert Einstein

Magic came from life itself, from the interaction of nature and the elements, from the energy of all living beings, and especially of people. A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. ~ Jim Butcher

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. ~ Eugene V. Debs

What is this Self, and how did the Shaiva philosophers of Kashmir experience It? They assert that the Self alone has absolute existence. This Self is within every human being, and in recognizing and experiencing It within ourselves, we are actually at one with the divine. What is more, the Self exists within us at all times, whether or not we recognize and experience It. As living beings we are always aware of our own existence, and the experience of existing is always present in us. Further, we never require the help of any aids in feeling our own existence. Even when we are in a state of deep dreamless sleep in which the senses and the knowing mind and intellect are no longer functioning, the Self continues to experience Itself as a witness to this state. Had the Self not existed as a witness during this time, how could we, upon awaking, recollect the void experienced in deep sleep? Thus the Self is always self-existent, self-evident, and self-conscious, and is Itself Its own proof.

Shaiva philosophers, relying on their experiences of deep revelation (turya) during meditation, assert that the Self is Consciousness, and that Consciousness is actually a kind of stirring. It is not physical or psychic in nature, but it is described as a spiritual stir or urge. All living beings feel in themselves this urge in the form of a will to know and to do, and so we are always inclined toward knowing and doing. We can recognize this urge in all forms of life, even in a health ~ Balajinnatha Pandita

The right to lead a life free of fear is a fundamental right of all living beings. But this fundamental right is being brutally violated by humans in animal testing, meat and dairy industry, circus, zoos, aquariums, and sports. ~ Ama H. Vanniarachchy

In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings. ~ Nhat Hanh

If the extension of your compassion does not include all living beings, then you will be unable to find peace by yourself. ~ Albert Schweitzer

We need others for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings. We cannot exist without others, and they in turn are affected by everything we do. The idea that it is possible to secure our own welfare while neglecting the welfare of others, or even at the expense of others, is completely unrealistic. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

Buddha's teachings are scientific methods to solve the problems of all living beings permanently. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

The Jain religion in India teaches that because all life is essentially interrelated and interconnected, all living beings should be considered sacred and be respected. This belief forms the basis of the doctrine of ahimsa, which has been translated into English variously as "reverence for life," "nonviolence," and "dynamic compassion." ~ Nathaniel Altman

Understanding and Love are not two separate things, but just one. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you cannot help but love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people. ~ Nhat Hanh

Anyone who does not look at the origin of living beings
with a materialist prejudice will see this evident truth: All
living beings are works of a Creator, Who is All-Powerful,
All-Wise, and All-Knowing. This Creator is Allah, Who created
the whole universe from non-existence, designed it in
the most perfect form, and fashioned all living beings. ~ Harun Yahya

Reconcile with yourself for the sake of the world, for the sake of all living beings. Your peace and serenity are crucial for all of us. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Game or no, she would someday die, as all living beings did. But that wasn't the tragedy. Nor was there tragedy in being a pawn. All souls are, if not of eternal beings, then as pawns of their own bodies. The game, whatever shape it takes, lasts only as long as the body holds out. The tragedy, every time, is choosing something other than love. ~ Martha Brockenbrough

Knowledge of all living beings of the entire world is in only one Soul. But the knowledge that sees the ego and everything, as objects to be known (gneya); only that knowledge is called as the 'Knowledge'. However, that is partial Knowledge but only from that moment it is regarded as real applied focused awareness. Where there is Knowledge, the focused applied awareness may be partial or complete. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Peter couldn't help remembering the stirring moment when he and Kate had sung back into life the chorus of health and well-being in Andrew's body; the base chord that hummed in all living beings, distinct to each person but closely linked together. ~ Alan McCluskey

You know what music is? God's little reminder that there's something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living beings, every where, even the stars. ~ Robin Williams

Without question, the most important practice is bodhichitta. The wish to attain enlightenment to lead all living beings to that same state ... This mind of enlightenment is based on pure, great compassion, which in turn is based on pure, great love. In each case pure means impartial. Without conditions. And great means benefiting all living beings, not just the small group of those we happen to like at the moment. ~ David Michie

Normally we divide the external world into that which we consider to be good or valuable, bad or worthless, or neither. Most of the time these discriminations are incorrect or have little meaning. For example, our habitual way of categorizing people as friends, enemies, and strangers depending on how they make us feel is both incorrect and a great obstacle to developing impartial love for all living beings. Rather than holding so tightly to our discriminations of the external world, it would be much more beneficial if we learned to discriminate between valuable and worthless states of mind. ~ Kelsang Gyatso

If one doth act in friendly wise, With no evil thought toward any single creature, And in so doing becometh proper, And if he have compassion in his soul Toward all living beings
this noble one Doth acquire abundant Virtue. ~ Gautama Buddha

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that moulded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and the system of behaviour of a species are parts of the same whole ... Wordsworth is right: there is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no correspondingly adequate inhibition. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Wonder of wonders! Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men's minds have become inverted through delusive thinking they fail to perceive this. ~ Gautama Buddha

And if we dare to look into those eyes, then we shall feel their suffering in our hearts. More and more people have seen that appeal and felt it in their hearts. All around the world there is an awakening of understanding and compassion, and understanding that reaches out to help the suffering animals in their vanishing homelands. That embraces hungry, sick, and desperate human beings, people who are starving while the fortunate among us have so much more than we need. And if, one by one, we help them, the hurting animals, the desperate humans, then together we shall alleviate so much of the hunger, fear, and pain in the world. Together we can bring change to the world, gradually replacing fear and hatred with compassion and love. Love for all living beings. ~ Jane Goodall

I am a Hindu because it is Hinduism which makes the world worth living. I am a Hindu hence I Love not only human beings, but all living beings. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

For all living beings, second second may never come, it may never exist and this makes this very second infinitely precious! Second second lies in the future; it has not born yet and it may never be born! This very second is our one and only real shelter! If the next second comes, it will be our new and unique shelter! All we have is a second in this dream world! Love this present second with all your heart! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

All living beings have to take incarnations. Companions are just like pedestrians in the way. ~ Shiv Sangal

To be meek and humble means to have a service attitude towards God, the Vaisnavas, and all living beings. Unless we have that, our chanting will have minimal effect and many births may pass before we finally come to the conclusion. ~ Radhanath Swami

Time perfects all living beings as well as kills them; it alone is awake when all others are asleep. Time is insurmountable. ~ Chanakya

Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion ... is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception. ~ Sharon Salzberg

Contemplating this suffering which is unbearable to us, and is unbearable to others, too, can produce awake mind, which arises from the compassion that wishes to free all living beings from suffering. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

I believe in preventing cruelty to all living beings in any form. ~ Morarji Desai

The rain water enlivens all living beings of the earth both movable (insects, animals, humans, etc.) and immovable (plants, trees, etc.), and then returns to the ocean it value multiplied a million fold. ~ Chanakya

Senseless people name evil good, call good evil. As you are doing. You accuse Us of passing false judgement: you do Us injustice. We shall prove this to you. You ask who We are: We are God's handle, Master Death, a truly effective reaper. Our scythe works its way. It cuts down white, black, red, brown, green, blue, grey, yellow, and all kinds of lustrous flowers in its path, irrespective of their splendour, their strength, their virtue. And the violet's beautiful colour, rich perfume, and palatable sap, avail it nought. See: that is justice. Our justification was acknowledged by the Romans and the poets, for they knew Us better than you do.
You ask what We are: We are nothing, and yet something. Nothing, because We have neither life, nor being, nor form, and We are no spirit, not visible, not tangible; something, because We are the end of life, the end of existence, the beginning of nullity, a cross between the two. We are a happening that fells all people. Huge giants must fall before Us; all living beings must be transformed by Us.
You ask where We are: We are not ascertainable. But Our form was found in a temple in Rome*, painted on a wall, as a hoodwinked man sitting on an ox; this man wielded a hatchet in his right hand and a shovel in his left hand, with which he was beating the ox. A great crowd of all kinds of people was hitting him, fighting him, and making casts at him, each one with the tools of his trade: even the nun with her psalter was there. They str ~ Johannes Von Saaz

Nothing ends. There is matter and there is energy, and some believe these two the only things in existence. But a third exists. It infuses both matter and energy, and yet also stands alone. Let us call it potential. Only in the realm of potential can we act, to effect changes upon all existence. Indeed, it is the realm in which we live, we living things, in our stubborn battle with success and failure.

Yet the truth remains. Of the two, success and failure, only one ends the game.

Now, poet, I see the shock writ deep upon your lined face, and yet it must be clear to you, even in this moment of despair, that love was at the heart of this tale, and now we must once more settle back and take breath, steadying ourselves for what is still to come.

The warriors wallow in what they will, in all that they make of the world, which is little more than destruction and suffering. Recall the child with the stone, on her knees in the grass, a boy's crushed face beneath her? Such is the glory of the belligerent.

Revel in it, if you're of the mind to.

What comes next, my friend, is entirely another kind of glory.

What is the secret of sorcery? It is potential. Now then, on the dawn of magic's burgeoning, let us see what they make of it. ~ Steven Erikson

The menfolk, they die, all right. And it's us women who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us. ~ James Baldwin

If you can think of life, for a moment, as a large house with a nursery, living and dining rooms, bedrooms, study, and so forth, all unfamiliar and bright, the chapters which follow are, in a way, like looking through the windows of this house. Certain occupants will be glimpsed only briefly. Visitors come and go. At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen. ~ James Salter

But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a super-professor. all men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character.… Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people's troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don't you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too? ~ Robertson Davies

I haven't lived in Sweden since I was a teenager. We lived in southern Sweden, about two hours north of Copenhagen, where my family's home base has been since 1970. Our parents bought a schoolhouse in preparation for self-sufficient living. They wanted to create a place to do all the things they believed in. ~ Neneh Cherry

The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind. ~ Norman Borlaug

My fears, my failures, my phases, real and imagined and everything in between, do not get to say who I am. They can't. Because Jesus already did. He rose from the dead with new names for me. Forgiven. Approved. Loved. Daughter. Heir. Friend. ~ Scarlet Hiltibidal

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away. ~ Gertrude Stein

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Let my assure you, Brethren, that some day you will have a personal Priesthood interview with the Savior, Himself. If you are interested, I will tell you the order in which He will ask you to account for your earthly responsibilities.

First, He will request an accountability report about your relationship with your wife. Have you actively been engaged in making her happy and ensuring that her needs have been met as an individual?

Second, He will want an accountability report about each of your children individually. He will not attempt to have this for simply a family stewardship but will request information about your relationship to each and every child.

Third, He will want to know what you personally have done with the talents you were given in the pre-existence.

Fourth, He will want a summary of your activity in your church assignments. He will not be necessarily interested in what assignments you have had, for in his eyes the home teacher and a mission president are probably equals, but He will request a summary of how you have been of service to your fellowmen in your Church assignments.

Fifth, He will have no interest in how you earned your living, but if you were honest in all your dealings.

Sixth, He will ask for an accountability on what you have done to contribute in a positive manner to your community, state, country, and the world. ~ David O. McKay

There is no real difference between work and play - it's all living. ~ Richard Branson

I am the neurological opposite of a psychopath, in that I feel anxious almost all the time. It must be great to not constantly feel like you've got someone living inside your face, shooting you with a mini Taser. ~ Jon Ronson

So herein lies the choice for those of us who are Christians. We can either stay within the Christianity we have mastered with the Jesus we have domesticated, or we can leave Christianity as a destination, embrace Christianity as a way of life, and then journey to reality, where God is present and living in every person, every human community, and all creation. ~ Samir Selmanovic

Life is all about chances. You might be safer not taking any. But playing it totally safe means you're only existing. Not living. I want to live. ~ Ellen Hopkins

What we now call education is not education at all, because nobody talks to you about all these things. Your teachers prepare you to pass examinations, but they do not talk to you about living, which is most important; because very few know how to live. Most of us merely survive, we somehow drag along, and therefore life becomes a dreadful thing. Really to live requires a great deal of love, a great feeling for silence, a great simplicity with an abundance of experience; it requires a mind that is capable of thinking very clearly, that is not bound by prejudice or superstition, by hope or fear. All this is life, and if you are not being educated to live, then education has no meaning. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

All death matters."
"Only to the living. ~ Dean Koontz

He had looked at Jude, then, and had felt that same sensation he sometimes did when he thought, really thought of Jude and what his life had been: a sadness, he might have called it, but it wasn't a pitying sadness; it was a larger sadness, one that seemed to encompass all the poor striving people, the billions he didn't know, all living their lives, a sadness that mingled with a wonder and awe at how hard humans everywhere tried to live, even when their days were so very difficult, even when their circumstances were so wretched. Life is so sad, he would think in those moments. It's so sad, and yet we all do it. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Until that morning when we all went to the riverbank, I still believed Mother would take Leah, not me. Leah who, even in her malarial stupor, rushed forward to crouch with the battery in the canoe and counter its odd tilt. I was outshone was usual by her heroism. But as we watched that pirogue drift away across the Kwenge, Mother gripped my hand so tightly I understood that I had been chosen. She would drag me out of Africa if it was her last living act as a mother. I think probably it was. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

In all seriousness, Archer claims that if you, as a living, alive person, hear the song "You're the One That I Want" from the musical Grease three times in a single day - seemingly by accident, whether in an elevator, on a radio, a telephone hold button, or whatever - it indicates that you'll surely die before sunset. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

But just like the art of acquiring wealth, the art of struggling for political power requires no special discipline. There is no danger, in our hyper-moralized, hyper-political culture, that our young people will somehow fail to be enchanted by the prospect of making a difference. The danger is quite otherwise: that as all human goods are either put to use or discarded in the struggle for social and political ends, we lose our humanity and the dignity it implies. We lose what makes life worth living, whether that is intellectual life or any of the other unutterably precious human activities that dwell in peace and holy uselessness. ~ Zena Hitz

My route, Sior Francis - and don't be surprised when you hear it - my route when I set out to find God... was... laziness. Yes, laziness. If I wasn't lazy I would have gone the way of respectable, upstanding people. Like everyone else I would have studied a trade - cabinet-maker, weaver, mason - and opened a shop; I would have worked all day long, and where then would I have found time to search for God? I might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack: that's what I would have said to myself. All my mind and thoughts would have been occupied with how to earn my living, feed my children, how to keep the upper hand over my wife. With such worries, curse them, how could I have the time, or inclination, or the pure heart needed to think about the Almighty?

But by the grace of God I was born lazy. To work, get married, have children, and make problems for myself were all too much trouble. I simply sat in the sun during winter and in the shade during summer, while at night, stretched out on my back on the roof of my house, I watched the moon and the stars. And when you watch the moon and the stars how can you expect your mind not to dwell on God? I couldn't sleep any more. Who made all that? I asked myself. And why? Who made me, and why? Where can I find God so that I may ask Him? Piety requires laziness, you know. It requires leisure - and don't listen to what others say. The laborer who lives from hand to mouth returns home each night exhausted and famished. He a ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Do I like living with Daniel's family? No. Would I ever tell him that? No. I know I'm all about honesty and saying what I think, but sometimes people are more important than the truth. ~ Linda Gerber

all the while trying not to think of the golden eyed idiot from the bar, not how his voice sounded, low and velvety or how the moon light gave little reflections on his hair or the shining in his eyes. I'm like a sappy girl from a book, she thought hiding her face under her purple pillows. ~ Amanda Littrell

A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now. When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it migh ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A more appropriate question to ask a Buddhist is simply, "What is life?" From our understanding of impermanence, the answer should be obvious: "Life is a big array of assembled phenomena, and thus life is impermanent." It is a constant shifting, a collection of transitory experiences. And although myriad life-forms exist, one thing we all have in common is that no living being wishes to suffer. We ~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles. ~ Julian Jaynes

Sometimes I felt like I was living on an island, where all I did was hope a friend would float by, and when they finally arrived, I began to wonder when they'd go away. ~ Sarah Hepola

Why do we need so many people on Earth? I ask you. What are they good for? They live out ludicrous lives of pointless desperation. Ninety-nine percent of the human population is so much wasted resources. Stubborn vermin, we humans are.

Granted, in the past, the unwashed masses were necessary. We needed them to till our fields and fight our wars. We needed them to labor in our factories making consumer crap that we flipped back at them at a handsome profit.

Alas, those days are gone. We live in a boutique economy now. Energy is abundant and cheap. Mentars and robotic labor make and manage everything. So who needs people? People are so much dead white. They eat up our profits. They produce nothing but pollution and social unrest. They drive us crazy with their pissing and moaning. I think we can all agree that Corporation Earth is in need of a serious downsizing.
...
The boutique economy has no need of the masses, so let's get rid of them. But how, you ask? Not with wars, surely, or disease, famine, or mass murder. Despots have tried all these methods through the millennia, and they're never a permanent solution.

No, all we need to do is buy up the ground from under their feet -- and evict them. We're buying up the planet, Bishop, fair and square. We're turning it into the most exclusive gated community in history. Now, the question is, in two hundred years, will you be a member of the landowners club, or will you be living in some tin ~ David Marusek

From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.

He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothin ~ Ambrose Bierce

We perceive things differently. For you receiving Jesus means shouting from the hill praises to the Lord. For me, it is a deep and intimate mystical experience. For you living by the Word of God means having leveled and measured life, not smoking, not drinking, and obeying to His Biblical commands as strict as possible. For me, living by the Word of God means trying to find my true path and destiny. Learning who I am, why I am here and what God wants am, why I am here and what God wants me to do. To find that out, sometimes I have to dig deep into those magical and occult books, which you dismiss so easily."
"The only book you need Michael is the Holy Bible. Everything is written in there. All the answers you are searching for. But you have to read with your heart, not your mind. All those other books will just confuse you and blur your mind."
"I disagree. I can't believe I am hearing this from the Pastor of the church in the twenty -first century. Are you sure you didn't fly in with some time machine from the inquisition age. ~ Stevan V. Nikolic

Your past doesn't actually exist. What you think is your past is a tiny blip of electricity in your brain happening right now. And if that's happening now, what's actually happening right now isn't really happening for you at all. This is what it is meant when people say, live in the present. ~ Dan Pearce