Life Declined Quotes

Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes, that was better in any case, life declined. ~ Julian Barnes

A.Q., Keyes remembered, stood for Asshole Quotient. Skip Wiley had a well-known theory that the quality of life declined in direct proportion to the Asshole Quotient. According to Wiley's reckoning, Miami had 134 total assholes per square mile, giving it the worst A.Q. in North America. In second place was Aspen, Colorado (101), with Malibu Beach, California, finishing third at 97. ~ Carl Hiaasen

Kid, you had a rough day. Everyone has them. And when you do - do what I do - you ask yourself: Anybody's life better because of what I did today? If the answer's yes . . . then stop your whining. If not, well, do better tomorrow. ~ Lodro Rinzler

When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no. I was a burnt-out litigation solicitor in my thirties, hating my life, and his cancer made me re-evaluate it all. ~ Michelle Paver

But now what? Is this a ticket to a new understanding of my life, or a bomb that's going to blow up everything?

Consider one more possibility: that you remain essentially the same person you were, neither new nor destroyed. ~ Ellen Ullman

Television's contribution to family life has been an equivocal one. For while it has, indeed, kept the members of the family from dispersing, it has not served to bring them together. By its domination of the time families spend together, it destroys the special quality that distinguishes one family from another, a quality that depends to a great extent on what a family does, what special rituals, games, recurrent jokes, familiar songs, and shared activities it accumulates. ~ Marie Winn

There were many influences on me while growing up. In the late Seventies and early Eighties when I was growing up in Hyderabad, it was a bit more laid-back, and that gave you time to think about things differently without perhaps being caught up in the narrow approach to one's journey through life. ~ Satya Nadella

It's tempting to just write a comic called 'Everyone Mail Randall Munroe Twenty Bucks' - maybe it would work, and I could just close down the 'xkcd' store and sit on a beach and draw pictures and make snarky Reddit posts for the rest of my life. ~ Randall Munroe

High in the hazy sky, the snowfkakes looked tiny and all alike, but as they drifted past the narrow window of the sewing room, all were unique - long or round or triangular - as if they'd borrowed their shapes from the clouds they'd come from. ~ Ursula Hegi

We have made money our god and called it the good life. We have trained our children to go for jobs hat bring the quickest corporate advancements at the highest financial levels. We have taught them careerism but not ministry and wonder why ministers are going out of fashion. We fear coddling the poor with food stamps while we call tax breaks for the rich business incentives. We make human community the responsibility of government institutions while homelessness, hunger, and drugs seep from the centers of our cities like poison from open sores for which we do not seek either the cause or the cure. We have created a bare and sterile world of strangers where exploitation is a necessary virtue. We have reduced life to the lowest of values so that the people who have much will not face the prospect of having less.
Underlying all of it, we have made women the litter bearers of a society where disadvantage clings to the bottom of the institutional ladder and men funnel to the top, where men are privileged and women are conscripted for the comfort of the human race. We define women as essential to the development of the home but unnecessary to the development of society. We make them poor and render them powerless and shuttle them from man to man. We sell their bodies and question the value of their souls. We call them unique and say they have special natures, which we then ignore in their specialness. We decide that what is true of men is true of women and then say that women ~ Joan D. Chittister

We will mulitply the gospel only when we allow others to get close enough to us to see the life of Christ in action. ~ David Platt

Your life has many purposes, many goals, but the ultimate purpose of life is to be happy. ~ Debasish Mridha

Human life has no meaning independent of itself. There is no cosmic force or deity to give it meaning or significance. There is no ultimate destiny for man. Such a belief is an illusion of humankind's infancy. The meaning of life is what we choose to give it. Meaning grows out of human purposes alone. Nature provides us with an infinite range of opportunities, but it is only our vision and our action that select and realize those that we desire. ~ Paul Kurtz

Shut up." She put her finger to his lips, and his voice choked off. She said slowly, "I've learned I can live without you."
Kasimir's heart cracked inside his chest. He'd lost her. She was going to send him away, back into the bleak winter.
"But I've also learned," Josie whispered, "that I don't want to." Her brown eyes were suddenly warm, like the sky after a sudden spring storm. "I tried to stop loving you. But once I love someone, I love for life." Her lips lifted in a trembling smile. "I'm stubborn that way. ~ Jennie Lucas

Happiness is a choice, a repetitive one. ~ Akilnathan Logeswaran

Fiction is life by design. ~ Mary Kittredge

My father gave me a penny tree when I wasn't much older than you are, and when he did, he said he believed everyone needs a special place to lick their wounds and regroup, somewhere that feels safer than anywhere else in the world. So that's what we're doing here today, We're nailing that penny to this tree because I want you to have somewhere to go that grounds you, an axis for your world to spin around, and a place that's all yours and no one else's-- for times when life throws things at you, Annie: things that test you and push you to your limits; things not unlike what you're going through right now. Only from now on, instead of running away from them, you'll have somewhere to think them through. Your own special spot where you can hurt in private when you need to be alone, and where you can weigh all of the pros and cons to make the decisions you need to make. ~ Holly Kennedy

To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you. ~ Anais Nin

My life is so much more interesting inside my head. ~ -Unknown

Bob, who had never been late in his life, suspected there was something hostile at the core of people who always were. ~ Dennis Lehane

My fantasy was that I was the long-lost switched-at-birth child of wealthy eccentrics. One day, they would find me and take me away from the gypsy caravan that was my life, and give me hot meals, a decent dress, and a pony. ~ Roberta Pearce

Life makes us suffer at times if we cruise through such moments and look forward to the light the day brings, that darkness that has crippled our mind can be fought and it can be defeated. ~ Radhika Mundra

Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living. ~ Gautama Buddha

I was very, very thrown by the fact that I had to make some big changes in my life in order to be myself, but under this kind of movie-star banner. ~ Kate Winslet

I'd spent so long trying to fit in,trying to be someone i wasn't,that i had no idea who i was any more. ~ Dorothy Koomson

I've never broken a bone in my life, or in my body. ~ Ringo Starr

A blessed life is one that understands that when God saves you, He has others in mind. I believe every Christian needs to know that they are not only saved, but are also called to live a life of purpose. ~ Brian Houston

My very survival has been based upon my belief that there is a higher purpose to this life: that principles are a reward in and of themselves. I cannot, therefore, look forward in despair, but rather with higher hopes for all in mind and with the determination that I might help to reach those heights. This ~ R.A. Salvatore

Your part in the co-creation process to attract more money in your life is to act on the ideas that are coming to you. ~ Joe Vitale

People really do identify with the characters they see on the show, but these days, social media allows you to interact with fans in a really interesting way. On my Twitter account, I'm Chris Carmack, not Will Lexington. I interact with fans and joke with them. I'll post pictures from my life. I think that helps drop the curtain of a character. ~ Chris Carmack

Jamie came back to the apartment one night to find her spreading a viscous fluid onto a canvas. It was threaded wtih blood. "Good God," he said. "What the hell is that?"
Pia didn't bother to look up but continued to knead the clear slime across the canvas. "It's my new piece."
"But what is it?" He kept pointing. He'd never seen something so disgusting in his life. And her hands were completely in it.
"It's Jodie's placenta. She gave it to me. I'm going to tack it up and let it dry on this canvas. Then I'm gonna glue-gun pictures of dead fetuses onto Lucite and make them the centerpeice."
"Uh huh."
She raised her sticky hands to him. "It's about women, you know? The way that the world opresses them, all right? And it's about babies, and . . . I don't know . . . I just got the placenta today."
"Wow, that's wow . . . that's . . ." No words for this. He scratched his chin as she spread her hands in a concentric motion across the canvas. "So, do you really think anyone's gonna want to put that up on their wall when it's done?" he asked.
She scowled, displeased. ~ K. Stephens

I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. ~ Walt Whitman

My wife divorced me because she could not trust me anymore.
I never want a divorce because I love and care about our daughter. ~ Toba Beta

Henry had never felt so happy. Freshperson year had been one thing, an adventure, an exhilaration, all in all a success, but it had also been exhausting, a constant struggle and adjustment and tumult. Now he was locked in. Every day that summer had the same framework, the alarm at the same time, meals and workouts and shifts and SuperBoost at the same times, over and over, and it was that sameness, that repetition, that gave life meaning. He savored the tiny variations, the incremental improvements
tuna fish on his salad instead of turkey; tow extra reps on the bench press. Every move he made had purpose. ~ Chad Harbach

The truth is, what you do matters. What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Successful people just do the things that seem to make no difference in the act of doing them and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in. ~ Jeff Olson