Life In Short Quotes

The most general formula on which every religion and morality is founded is: "Do this and that, refrain from this and that - and then you will be happy! And if you don't..." Every morality, every religion, is based on this imperative; I call it the original sin of reason, the immortal unreason. In my mouth, this formula is changed into its opposite - the first example of my "revaluation of all values." An admirable human being, a "happy one," instinctively must perform certain actions and avoid other actions; he carries these impulses in his body, and they determine his
relations with the world and other human beings. In a formula: his virtue is the effect of his happiness. A long life, many descendants - these are not the rewards of virtue: instead, virtue itself is that slowing down of the metabolism which leads, among other things, to a long life, many descendants - in short, to Cornaro's virtue. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I am very certain that I do not want to waste my time with the 'drains'. There are so many beautiful, positive and uplifting things in life. There is so much beauty, so much joy. Life is so short and so fleeting. It is entirely up to us to enjoy each moment. There will of course be moments when you feel sad, hopeless, and despondent and, as though, all is lost. When that happens, it is time to pick up the phone and call the best radiator you know. ~ Preeti Shenoy

Life is short; this being so, who would pursue great things and not bear with what is at hand? These are the ways of madmen and men of evil counsel, at least in my judgment. ~ Euripides

The best thing in life is to go ahead with all your plans and your dreams, to embrace life and to live everyday with passion, to lose and still keep the faith and to win while being grateful. All of this because the world belongs to those who dare to go after what they want. And because life is really too short to be insignificant. ~ Charlie Chaplin

These things I'd learned when I was young: Life is short and men are cruel, and ponies are born to suffer. I decided that I would work as hard as I could at whatever job I was given, believing that I would earn my reward in the end and live forever in the ponies' place. ~ Iain Lawrence

Life and time is short it's best to take both in hands and enjoy it while it last ~ Joyce Guo

I could barely even say Will's name. And listening to their tales of family relationships, of thirty-year marriages, shared houses, lives, children, I felt like a fraud. I had been a carer for someone for six months. I'd loved him, and watched him end his life. How could these strangers possibly understand what Will and I had been to each other during that time? How could I explain the way we had so swiftly understood each other, the shorthand jokes, the blunt truths and raw secrets? How could I convey the way those short months had changed the way I felt about everything? The way he had skewed my world so totally that it made no sense without him in it? ~ Jojo Moyes

Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. ~ Shania Twain

Life is too short to waste on something your heart is no longer in. ~ Marie Force

I understand that each one of us works at a different speed, and has a slightly different process. I understand that these writers are painstaking, wanting each sentence-each word-to carry weight ... I know it's not laziness, but respect for the work, and I understand from my own work that haste makes waste. But I also understand that life is short, and that in the end, none of us is prolific. The creative spark dims, and then death puts it out. William Shakespeare, for instance, hasn't produced a new play for 400 years. That, my friends, is a long dry spell. ~ Stephen King

Arin nearly got his throat cut.
"The god of life preserve you," Cheat gasped. He staggered back, his knife glinting in the shadows of his small bedroom. "What the hell are you doing here? Breaking into my home like a thief in the night. Climbing through the window. You're lucky I saw your face in time."
"There's something I have to tell you."
"Start with why you couldn't come by the auction house at a decent hour. I thought you had a free pass. What about the girl's seal ring?"
"Unavailable."
Cheat squinted up at Arin, tapping the flat of the short blade against his thigh. In the dim light of a streetlamp, a slow grin spread across his face. "Had a falling-out with your lady, did you? A lovers' quarrel?"
Arin felt his face go dark and tight.
"Easy, lad. Just tell me: are the rumors true?"
"No."
"All right." Cheat held up his hands as if in surrender, the knife held loosely. "If you say they're not, they're not."
"Cheat. I broke curfew, scaled the general's wall, and stole through a guarded city to speak with you. Don't you think we have more important things to discuss than Valorian gossip? ~ Marie Rutkoski

I broke with the academic style because I decided that life is very short, very mysterious, and I didn't have the time to waste with academics. I would only say things in the most honesty manner. If people like it, fine. If not, I can't help that. Today I couldn't write academically even if I wanted to! (Rubem Alves, p. 188) ~ Mev Puleo

You can't expect to grow stronger when you avoid hard stuff. I have never met someone who's said, "I'm so thankful I took all those short cuts in my life. Best move ever. ~ Jason Vallotton

Their lives were precarious and they knew it. They were trying their best to fit themselves into a country which would never quite accept them, and to make themselves acceptable in a part of the world where their intrusion was resented in the vain hope that thus their establishments might endure ... The Orient remained strange and hostile. Unfamiliar diseases abounded. No one could be trusted. There was never security or peace for long. In any alley-way an assassin might be lurking, sent down from the Old Man of the Mountain. At any moment the lord might have to rise from his couch to ride out against enemy raiders. At any moment his lady might find herself in charge of the defence of her castle. At any moment the festivities might be interrupted by the sound of the infidel mangonels pounding against the walls. Life was merry, but it was short; and when the crisis came there was no lack of gallantry among the lords and ladies of Outremer. They had tasted with relish the gracious things of life; and they faced their doom with pride and resolution. ~ Steven Runciman

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life - achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one's life as well, when one can feel that one's work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest. ~ Oliver Sacks

Well, first of all," he began, "I really…I really like you." He looked into my eyes in a seeming effort to transmit the true meaning of each word straight into my psyche. All muscle tone disappeared from my body.
Marlboro Man was so willing to put himself out there, so unafraid to put forth his true feelings. I simply wasn't used to this. I was used to head games, tactics, apathy, aloofness. When it came to love and romance, I'd developed a rock-solid tolerance for mediocrity. And here, in two short weeks, Marlboro Man had blown it all to kingdom come.
There was nothing mediocre about Marlboro Man.
He had more to say; he didn't even pause to wait for a response. That, in his universe, was what a real man did.
"And…" He hesitated.
I listened. His voice was serious. Focused.
"And I just flat don't want you to leave," he declared, holding me close, resting his chin on my cheek, speaking directly into my ear.
I paused. Took a breath. "Well--" I began.
He interrupted. "I know we've just been doing this for two weeks, and I know you've already made your plans, and I know we don't know what the future holds, but…" He looked at me and cupped my face in his hand, his other hand on my arm.
"I know," I agreed, trying to muster some trite response. "I--"
He broke in again. He had some things to say. "If I didn't have the ranch, it'd be one thing," he said. My pulse quickened. "But I…my life is here."
"I know," I said again. "I wouldn ~ Ree Drummond

They stood together, arms wrapped tight, listening to the wind through the pines while snow fell softly all around. This was one of those moments in life she knew she'd never forget.

He moved his head so that his lips were close to her ear. "Run, Sasha. If you can do it, run like hell and don't look back."

Her breath came in short little gasps. "I don't want to run. ~ Trinity Faegen

An hour yesterday, an hour today, little-by-little, Tyler was bringing me back to life. I got a nervous fluttering in my belly wondering about our hour tomorrow. In these short spurts it felt good to focus on something other than the emptiness of missing Reece. But in the end, it all came back to him. ~ Danielle Sibarium

A life passed amid gangsters, thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other assorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smelled rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smelled the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscilla Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tell, a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, followed by the must decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy - in short (and in spite of all of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with Dick Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster. ~ Tiffany Baker

Foolish wise folk sneer at you; foolish wise folk would pull up the useless lilies, the needless roses, from the garden, would plant in their places only serviceable wholesome cabbage. But the Gardener knowing better, plants the silly short-lived flowers; foolish wise folk, asking for what purpose. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Oscar Wilde said that men marry because they are bored, and women because they are curious, and that both are disappointed ... He was right about the disappointment. You will be disappointed ... Not just in each other, but in yourselves. It's inevitable that you'll each fall short of your own expectations ... But you will also exceed those expectations, again and again, and in ways you can't possibly imagine. And my wish for you both is that there will come a time when you'll look back on this day and realize that - in spite of the disappointments - even the best of your old expectations seem pale in the face of the actual life you have lived together. ~ A. Manette Ansay

Life is too short, and sometimes brutal,
and in the end we have only each other...
Nothing else matters. ~ William Donelson

Life is short, he thought. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand. But no longer. Taking the small box, he put the Edfrank jewellery piece away in his coat pocket. ~ Philip K. Dick

Life is too short to spend in negativity. So I have made a conscious effort to not be where I don't want to be. ~ Hugh Dillon

Our time here on the earth is short, and our chance to make a difference is tiny. For me the grinding blocks of history came together in such a way that I was able to take what fragile defense I had and hold in place for seventy-six days. If I was able to give much it was only because I had some useful things from my life to give. I am a hotel manager ... my job never changed, even in a sea of fire. ~ Paul Rusesabagina

We were what we had in life, I thought, and I was not sad about it or apologetic for its corniness. ~ Danielle Evans

Happiness is not a zero-sum game. It's the only case in which the resources are limitless, and in which the rich can get richer at no expense to anyone else. That day in the park, I found it remarkably easy to own my happiness and celebrate Kate's as well.
It's a strange thing, though, how rare, maybe impossible, it is to have everyone you care about thriving at the same time. For a short spell, life seems certain and stable, until something shifts and redistributes, randomly, unpredictably, and when you look around at the new landscape, you see that it's someone else's turn now. You redirect your attention to focus on the friend in need. You hope - you know - they will do the same for you, when your turn comes. ~ Amy Poeppel

We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. ~ Tom Stoppard

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it. ~ Carlos Castaneda

I had no way of knowing, when I was sitting alone in that tiny bedroom, that in just a few short months, I would meet the love of my life: a man who lived across the ocean from me, in a little house by the sea. ~ Lang Leav

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short. ~ Bertrand Russell

I say embrace the total geek in yourself and just enjoy it. Life is too short to be cool. ~ Shirley Manson

The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I don't have all of the answers to the world. I don't know everything about life and marriage and happiness. But I do know what love is. And I do know that when love is real, and when love is in its strongest form, it is the most powerful thing on this earth. It kills, saves lives, heals wounds, and most of all, brings hope. That is what you have done for me, Lily. You have brought me hope. When I look into your eyes, I know that no matter what may happen to me, as long as I can see those eyes staring back at me, then I'll be fine. Somehow I'll make it through. Somehow I'll find a way to survive for you. And that's what I want to feel for the rest of my time here on Earth, however short or long that may be. I want to wake up every morning and see your shining face staring back at me. But I also want to protect you. I want to protect you from anything that may hurt you. I want to be there when you cry to dry your tears. When you feel lonely, I want to give you a kiss. When you are scared, to embrace you. And when you are happy, to share a laugh with you. I don't know what's in store for us, but I do know that true love outlasts everything. It outlasts doubt, hate, war, misfortune, and most of all death. I vow to you to always be beside you. Not only in this life, but the next. Because that's when love becomes real. That's when love becomes unchained from anything in this life. I know that when I die, the first thing that I will see will be your eyes. That is how I will know th ~ Mordred

In the NFL, you have a short shelf life. As a running back, if you're the first pick, and you're NFL life expectancy is only 3.5-6 years, your first big contract might not come until three years in - well, you might never get there. They need to get those signing bonuses up front because nothing is guaranteed. ~ Eric Dickerson

Resist the short term temptation of procrastination; the immediate pleasure and relief that it brings does not fair in comparison to the long lasting damage it does to your dreams and goals. ~ Noel DeJesus

No matter what level of instruction Marlboro Man gave me, no matter how many pointers, a horse trot for me meant a repeated and violet Slap! Slap! Slap! on the seat of my saddle. My feet were fine--they'd stay securely in the stirrups. But I just couldn't figure out how to use the muscles in my legs correctly, and I hadn't yet learned how to post. It was so unpleasant, the whole riding-a-horse business: my bottom would slap, my torso would stiffen, and I'd be sore for days--not to mention that I looked like a complete freak while riding--kind of like a tree trunk with red, stringy hair. Short of taking the rectal temperatures of cows, I'd never felt more out of place doing anything in my life.
All of this rushed to the surface when I saw Marlboro Man walking toward me with two of his horses, one of which was clearly meant for me. Where's my Jeep? I thought. Where's my torch? I don't want a horse. My bottom can't take it. Where's my Jeep? I'd never wanted to drive a Jeep so much.
"Hey," I said, walking toward him and smiling, trying to appear not only calm but also totally unconcerned about the reality that faced me. "Uh…I thought we were going burning."
I clearly sounded out the g. It was a loud, clanging cymbal.
"Oh, we are," he said, smiling. "But we've got to get to some areas the Jeep can't reach."
My stomach lurched. For more than a couple of seconds, I actually considered feigning illness so I wouldn't have to go. What can I say? I wondered. Tha ~ Ree Drummond

The solution which I am urging is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is LIfe in all its manifestations. Instead of this single unity, we offer children
Algebra, from which nothing follows; Geometry, from which nothing follows; Science, from which nothing follows; History, from which nothing follows; a Couple of Languages, never mastered; and lastly, most dreary of all, Literature, represented by plays of Shakespeare, with philological notes and short analyses of plot and character to be in substance committed to memory. Can such a list be said to represent Life, as it is known in the midst of living it? The best that can be said of it is, that it is a rapid table of contents which a deity might run over in his mind while he was thinking of creating a world, and has not yet determined how to put it together ~ Alfred North Whitehead

To be true to one's self is the ultimate test in life. To have courage and the sensitivity to follow your hidden dreams and stand tall against the odds that are bound to fall in your path. Life is too short and precious to be dealt with in any other fashion. This thought I hold dear to my heart and I always try to be true to myself and others that I encounter along the way. ~ Flo Hyman

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower-in short, what men should believe and strive for. ~ Friedrich Hayek

Although emotionally delicate and eminently bruisable, teenagers are short on empathy. That comes later in life, if it comes at all. ~ Stephen King

So, O king, does the present life of man on earth seem to me, in comparison with the time which is unknown to us, as though a sparrow flew swiftly through the hall, coming in by one door and going out by the other, and you, the while, sat at meat with your captains and liegemen, in wintry weather, with a fire burning in your midst and heating the room, the storm raging out of doors and driving snow and rain before it. For the time for which he is within, the bird is sheltered from the storm, but after this short while of calm he flies out again into the cold and is seen no more. Thus the life of man is visible for a moment, but we know not what comes before it or follows after it. ~ Bede

Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting. But we are very far from reaching that state. We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions, to argue. Put us in front of a picture and we chatter, each in our different way. Proust, when going round an art gallery, liked to comment on who the people in the pictures reminded him of in real life; which might have been a deft way of avoiding the direct aesethetic confrontation. But it is a rare picture that stuns, or argues, us into silence. And if one does, it is only a short time before we want to explain and understand the very silence into which we have been plunged. ~ Julian Barnes

Growing up, my mother used to tell me to cherish life. Think of a candle flame. It burns bright but slowly dies out, when its burning bright it represents living life to its fullest. Each flicker is an obstacle that is overcome. In the end the flame slowly wanes. You have to make the most of what you have when the flame is brightest. You never know when the flame is going to be blown out. Life is short, but it can also be beautiful. Its a symbol of hope. Candle flames take away the small portion of darkness giving the slightest bit of illumination in the darkest of times.. -Liam ~ Kaitlyn Hoyt

Rather than leaving generous people on the short end of an unequal bargain, practices of generosity are actually likely instead to provide generous givers with essential goods in life - happiness, health, and purpose - which money and time themselves simply cannot buy. That is an empirical fact well worth knowing. ~ Christian Smith

Misplaced effort in the spiritual life often consists in stubbornly insisting upon compulsive routines which seem to us to be necessary because they accord with our own short-sighted notions. ~ Thomas Merton

We talk of literature as if it were a mere matter of rule and measurement, a series of processes long since brought to mechanical perfection: but it would be less incorrect to say that it all lies in the future; tried by the outdoor standard, there is as yet no literature, but only glimpses and guideboards; no writer has yet succeeded in sustaining, through more than some single occasional sentence, that fresh and perfect charm. If by the training of a lifetime one could succeed in producing one continuous page of perfect cadence, it would be a life well spent, and such a literary artist would fall short of Nature's standard in quantity only, not in quality. ~ Brenda Wineapple

Wisdom, in short, whose lessons have been represented as so hard to learn by those who never were at her school, only teaches us to extend a simple maxim universally known and followed even in the lowest life, a little farther than that life carries it. And this is, not to buy at too dear a price. Now, whoever takes this maxim abroad with him into the grand market of the world, and constantly applies it to honours, to riches, to pleasures, and to every other commodity which that market affords, is, I will venture to affirm, a wise man. ~ Henry Fielding

In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and remind us to go all in, because life is short. The joy edges the pain and gives us a reason to rise. ~ Anna White

Imagine that one day you are out for a walk in the woods. Suddenly you see a small spaceship on the path in front of you. A tiny Martian climbs out the spaceship and stands on the ground looking up at you…
What would you think? Never mind, it's not important. But have you ever given any thought to the fact that you are a Martian yourself?
It is obviously unlikely that you will ever stumble upon a creature from another planet. We do not even know that there is life on other planets. But you might stumble upon yourself one day. You might suddenly stop short and see yourself in a completely new light. On just such a walk in the woods.
I am an extraordinary being, you think. I am a mysterious creature.
You feel as if you are waking from an enchanted slumber. Who am I? you ask. You know that you are stumbling around on a planet in the universe. But what is the universe?
If you discover yourself in this manner you will have discovered something as mysterious as the Martian we just mentioned. You will not only have seen a being from outer space. You will feel deep down that you are yourself an extraordinary being. ~ Jostein Gaarder

I'm going to do the old 'plaster removal' technique and just get the pain over with in one go: 'Life's Too Short' isn't funny to me. ~ Ian Watson

Life is short and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourself to meditation. Avoid doing evil, and acquire merit, to the best of your ability, even at the cost of life itself. In short: Act so that you have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves and hold fast to this rule. ~ Milarepa

Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short ... was she happy? Not for a moment. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

As you begin to simplify your life, you're going to be making a lot of changes in the way you spend your time. If saying no is a problem for you, go back to your short list (#21) and keep it firmly in mind. Your objective will be to get to the point where you see that by turning down an invitation you're not saying no to someone else; rather you're saying yes! to what you really want to do. ~ Elaine St. James

I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me. ~ Sophia Loren

In life there are no short cuts; process is still the best way to get ahead. ~ Bidemi Mark-Mordi

My view is that life is too short. I'm not being melodramatic or anything, but when your mother dies in your arms - just you and her, and it's one o'clock in the morning, and you're waiting for her to exhale - you just think, life's too bloody short to argue about the little things. ~ Saffron Aldridge

One more comment from the heart: I'm old fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. Homo Ludens dances, sings, produces meaningful gestures, strikes poses, dresses up, revels and performs elaborate rituals. I don't wish to diminish the significance of these distractions-without them human life would pass in unimaginable monotony and possibly dispersion and defeat. But these are group activities above which drifts a more or less perceptible whiff of collective gymnastics. Homo Ludens with a book is free. At least as free as he's capable of being. He himself makes up the rules of the game, which are subject only to his own curiosity. He's permitted to read intelligent books, from which he will benefit, as well as stupid ones, from which he may also learn something. He can stop before finishing one book, if he wishes, while starting another at the end and working his way back to the beginning. He may laugh in the wrong places or stop short at words he'll keep for a life time. And finally, he's free-and no other hobby can promise this-to eavesdrop on Montaigne's arguments or take a quick dip in the Mesozoic. ~ Wisława Szymborska

If they'd been dogs, they would have all been in the yard eating grass and trying to yak up whatever was making them feel so lousy. Not a bone gnawed, not a ball chased-all tails went unwagged. Oh, life is a fast cat, a short leash, a flea in that place where you just can't scratch. ~ Christopher Moore

The next morning, I went over to pick them up. I'd spent the night thinking of more things I should tell them--everything about Chris I thought they needed to know.
It was all too much.
"I don't know how to tell you everything," I confessed to Bradley as he got into the car. I started to cry. "There's so many things and we have such a short amount of time."
"Just being here is all we need," he said. "I'm not an impersonator. I'm just here to feel Chris's life--I feel him here with me right now."
Bradley put me at ease and I calmed down. Back at the house, he and Clint became almost like family. Little bits of their personality came out as well--and I saw a glimmer of Clint's famous Dirty Harry character later on in the day when I had to leave to go to Bubba's basketball game.
They'd talked about coming with me--which frankly would have created an impossible circus. But I did give them the option. As they stood trying to make up their minds, I snapped into anxious mom mode.
"All right," I told them both. "You're welcome to come. But if you're coming, we're leaving now."
I guess my tone was a little too strident.
"So you want to get tough with me, huh, lady?" said Clint in his best Dirty Harry voice as he raised his eyebrow.
It's amazing how threatening a simple facial tic can be.
I left them home to study some of Chris's replica guns and gear. Our own already had its ample share of lawmen. ~ Taya Kyle

I've only written one decent poem in my life called "Lizard up My Leg": A lizard up my leg gave me a fright Not because he did, but 'cause he might. Okay, not a great poem, but it's honest and also it's short so I can remember it. ~ Danny Rubin

So far as we yet know, this is the only planet in the entire universe which has summoned forth life in all its brilliance and variety. To knowingly cut this flowering short is undoubtedly a crime, one more unspeakable even than the cruellest genocide or most destructive war. If each person is uniquely valuable, each species is surely more so. I can see no excuses for collaborating in such a crime. As the post-war Nuremberg trials established, ignorance is no defence; nor is merely following orders. To me the moral path lies not in passively accepting our destructive role, but in actively resisting such a horrendous fate. As ~ Mark Lynas

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. ~ Cheryl Strayed

The experience of that night, coming so overwhelmingly to a man so dead, almost rent me in pieces. It was the same feeling that artists know when we, rarely, achieve truth in our work; the feeling of union with some great force, of purpose and security, of being glad that we have lived. For the first time I felt the pull of race and blood and kindred, and felt beating within me things that had not begun with me. It was as if the earth under my feet had grasped and rooted me, and were pouring its essence into me. I sat there until the dawn of morning, and all night long my life seemed to be pouring out of me and running into the ground.
from the short story The Namesake ~ Willa Cather

Short isolated sentences were the mode in which ancient Wisdom delighted to convey its precepts, for the regulation of life and manners. ~ William Warburton

All that I desire in life are three ...
A wilderness: A beach on the sun-drenched sea,
A puff of opium,
And thee. ~ Roman Payne

If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear. If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he is not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy tale. The whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to defy. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Before I can over-think it, I lean in and kiss her. She's stunned at first, and then her lips come to life under mine. She's so soft and warm. Her arms wrap around my neck, bringing her closer.
I pull away slowly, holding her bright blue gaze. I feel as if I can't breathe, my hands are shaking. I don't know what I was expecting, but that definitely wasn't it. The kiss was short and quick, but it was different. I swallow and take a step back, turning my face away from her.
"I..."
She presses her finger to my lips, silencing me.
"Don't Kristian. You'll ruin it." She watches me for a moment longer and then takes a slow step back, before spinning around and dashing away into the dark rain. ~ Dannielle Wicks

Your life is short, son. Ours is long. Much too long. But we both live in time. You a short time. We a long time. The Childlike Empress has always been there. But she's not old. She has always been young. She still is. Her life isn't measured by time, but by names. She needs a new name. She keeps needing new names. ~ Michael Ende

But Sonja was more freakish, more wondrously confounding than the one-armed guard; rather than limbs she had, somehow, amputated expectations. She didn't have a husband, or children, or a house to clean and care for. She was capable of the work, school, time, commitment, and everything else it took to run a hospital. So even if Sonja was curt and short-tempered, Havaa could forgive her these shortcomings, which were shortcomings only in that they were the opposite of what a woman was supposed to be. The thick, stern shell hid the defiance that was Sonja's life. ~ Anthony Marra

What does failure do to us? We fall into a vicious downward spiral. Failure is a lot like a shot from a double barrel gun but with a difference. The first shot is like the news which explodes in one's face. But it is the second, after a short time lag, which causes the most damage. It comprises of pain, humiliation, shame, frustration and anger. The first shot pales in comparison. It is life after the blast that causes the most hurt. ~ Anup Kochhar

Life's too short when you find yourself sitting in a car for four hours every day trying to get from East L.A. to West L.A. to Hollywood and then back to East L.A. ~ Garrett Hedlund

In short, bioethics investigates ethical issues arising in the life sciences (medicine, health care, genetics, biology, research, etc) by applying the principles and methods of moral philosophy to these problems. ~ Adele Langlois

It was beginning to get late in the afternoon. On the edge of the earth, the sun slowly diminished. An unexpected calmness dropped in the atmosphere. In one short life, this drama would end. And that would be the end of it all; those, who suffered the worst, were the ones most deluded by the notion that this life was forever. Oh, how calm? How peacefully the River Murma flowed today? A mere twitter of a bird in the heavy groves, the shepherd's distant tune caught in the flute wafted through the air. There appeared to be no grimy crimes threatening such delightful sensations of undulated serenity. The night forest illuminated by fireflies everywhere. Lights sparkled, as they flew ubiquitous around the slim, tall trees and the heavy bushes of the blue forest. ~ Mehreen Ahmed

By this management I found an opportunity to see what a most insignificant, unthinking life the poor, indolent wretch, who, by his unactive temper, had at first been my ruin, now lived; how he only rose in the morning to go to bed at night; that, saving the necessary motion of the troops, which he was obliged to attend, he was a mere motionless animal, of no consequence in the world; that he seemed to be one who, though he was indeed alive, had no manner of business in life but to stay to be called out of it. He neither kept any company, minded any sport, played at any game, or indeed did anything of moment; but, in short, sauntered about like one that it was not two livres value whether he was dead or alive; that when he was gone, would leave no remembrance behind him that ever he was here; that if ever he did anything in the world to be talked of, it was only to get five beggars and starve his wife. ~ Daniel Defoe

I'd like to think I've left something in the world. Without in any way trying to be morbid, but life is very short, and I'd like to think I'd leave some body of work that would inspire other musicians long after I've gone. ~ Paul Weller

That was 1993 grunge in suburbia. This was 2003 hell in Harlem. (Dark City Lights) ~ Eve Kagan

My short attention span has allowed me a life of diversity in work and place. ~ Maira Kalman

The things sane societies loved, it hated. The things sane societies hated, it loved; the things sane societies tried to do, it tried to avoid; the things sane societies tried to avoid, it did with relish. It pursued chaos and hated order, it worshipped ugliness and loathed beauty. If sane people wished to dress as neatly and well as they could, these people were persuaded to dress as hideously and grotesquely as possible; if sane people wanted music to be melodious, these people (whether we are speaking of their "popular" or their "serious" music) were cozened into believing they liked raucous and tuneless noise. If women had been feminine, if home life had been secure, if children had been innocent, if men had been gallant, if art had been beautiful, if love had been romantic, then all these things must be stood on their heads. Of course, life was not always like that. Of course things had often fallen short of their ideals, or even of their minimal norms; but at least most people tried to do things properly and at least the surrounding civilisation encouraged them to try. Never before had the deliberate aim been an inverted parody of all that should be. Everywhere, in every area of life, a single principle reigned: inversion; the worship of chaos; the creed of the madhouse. ~ Alice Lucy Trent

I mean it wasn't an empty hole, there was al­ways some­thing in it, but it was never right. It never fit. I went to col­lege for a short time, until I sat back one day and said to my­self: An­drew, what the fuck are you doing here? And it clicked in my head that I wasn't there be­cause it's what I wanted, I was there be­cause it's what peo­ple ex­pected, even peo­ple I don't know, so­ci­ety. It's what peo­ple do. ~ J.A. Redmerski

Hey, suit guy! The man bellowed.
Chris bit back the urge to yell. He turned, expecting to be confronted by a hand held out for money. What he saw was a pair of enormous eyes, the same color as the spring sky, set in a face with high cheekbones and a delicate chiseled jaw. The man's short, spiked hair was dyed a vibrant purple, making his creamy pale skin glow. Letting his gaze shift downward in a sudden still silence, Chris took in the sleek, sculpted muscles under the snug green t-shirt, the faded jeans molded to slim hips and thighs.
He'd never in his life's seen anyone so beautiful. ~ Ally Blue

But if you were Charlotte, and you had been feeling that life was some cosmic joke that had no punchline, and in the space of a moment you had gone from being Charlotte-without-a-kitten to being Charlotte-with-a-kitten, you too would have found it nothing short of remarkable. ~ Anne Ursu

Life is too short to give a fuck. Jump in the pool butt ass naked and do it up. ~ Richard P. Denney

Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be (Ben Jonson) ~ Aidan Chambers

Because life's too short to blush,
I keep my blood tucked in. ~ Alice Fulton

they contain the essence of the plant from which they were extracted. Actually, the term essential oil is short for the original term 'quintessential oil'. This is based on the Aristotelian idea that all matter is made up of four main elements (water, earth, air, and fire). Additionally, there was the fifth element, the quintessence, which was considered to be in spirit form or rather life force. Evaporation and distillation were viewed as ways of extracting the spirit from the plant. This has been reflected to even today's world where we can see the word 'spirits' being used to describe distilled alcoholic drinks such as eau de vie, whiskey and brandy. In the current days, the idea has been let go of since we know that essential oils are actually ~ Matt Hall

Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of time might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally the order of things could be reversed, and in the worst cases order itself could vanish entirely. Sometimes things that should not be there at all might be added onto time. By adjusting time this way to suit their own purposes, people probably adjusted the meaning of their existences. In other words, by adding such operations to time, they were able - but just barely - to preserve their own sanity. Surely, if a person had to accept the time through which he had just passed uniformly in the given order, his nerves could not bear the strain. Such a life, Tengo felt, would be sheer torture. ~ Haruki Murakami

That language may be a compound code, and that the discovery of an enormous complexity beneath a simple surface may well be more dismaying than delightful. E.g.: the maze of termite tunnels in your joist, the intricate cancer in her perfect breast, the psychopathology of everyday life, the Auschwitz in an anthill casually DDT'd by a child, the rage of atoms in a drop of ink - in short, anything examined curiously enough. ~ John Barth

I lent only half an ear to those well-intentioned folk who say that happiness is enervating, liberty too relaxing, and that kindness is a corruption for those upon whom it is practiced. That may be; but in the world as it is, such reasoning amounts to a refusal to nourish a starving man decently, for fear that in a few years he may suffer from overfeeding. When useless servitude has been alleviated as far as possible, and unnecessary misfortune avoided, there will remain as a test of man's fortitude that long series of veritable ills, death, old age, and incurable sickness, love unrequited and friendship rejected or betrayed, the mediocrity of a life less vast than our projects and duller than our dreams; in short, all the woes caused by the divine nature of things. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

war is not inevitable. Nor has it always been with us. War is a human invention - an organized, deliberate action of an anti-social kind - and in the long span of human life on Earth, a fairly recent one. For more than 99 percent of the time that humans have lived on this planet, most of them have never made war. Many languages don't even have a word for it. Turn off CNN and read anthropology. You'll see.
What's more, war is obsolete. Most nations don't make war anymore, except when coerced by the United States to join some spurious "coalition." The earth is small, and our time here so short. No other nation on the planet makes war as often, as long, as forcefully, as expensively, as destructively, as wastefully, as senselessly, or as unsuccessfully as the United States. No other nation makes war its business. ~ Ann Jones

In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can't long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly. ~ Desiderius Erasmus

I was always the last to leave. That was my great skill. ~ Tara Isabella Burton, "Here In Avalon" Songs Of My Selfie

In short, the five or seven hours a day which each will have at his disposal, after having consecrated several hours to the production of necessities, would amply suffice to satisfy all longings for luxury, however varied. Thousands of associations would undertake to supply them. What is now the privilege of an insignificant minority would be accessible to all. Luxury, ceasing to be a foolish and ostentatious display of the bourgeois class, would become an artistic pleasure.
Everyone would be the happier for it. In collective work, performed with a light heart to attain a desired end, a book, a work of art, or an object of luxury, each will find an incentive and the necessary relaxation that makes life pleasant.
In working to put an end to the division between master and slave, we work for the happiness of both, for the happiness of humanity. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day? ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, a little too heartily, "So this is the library." There certainly couldn't be any doubt on that score; never had a room so resembled popular preconception. The walls were paneled in rich, dark wood, although the finish had worn off the edges in spots, where books had scraped against the wood in passing one too many times. A whimsical iron staircase curved to the balcony, the steps narrowing into pie-shaped wedges that promised a broken neck to the unwary. I tilted my head back, dizzied by the sheer number of books, row upon row, more than the most devoted bibliophile could hope to consume in a lifetime of reading.

In one corner, a pile of crumbling paperbacks - James Bond, I noticed, squinting sideways, in splashy seventies covers - struck a slightly incongruous note. I spotted a moldering pile of Country Life cheek by jowl with a complete set of Trevelyan's History of England in the original Victorian bindings. The air was rich with the smell of decaying paper and old leather bindings. Downstairs, where I stood with Colin, the shelves made way for four tall windows, two to the east and two to the north, all hung with rich red draperies checked with blue, in the obverse of the red-flecked blue carpet. On the west wall, the bookshelves surrendered pride of place to a massive fireplace, topped with a carved hood to make Ivanhoe proud, and large enough to roast a serf. In short, the library was a Gothic fantasy. ~ Lauren Willig

For this is what I have learned, in my short life: do not act out of anger. Act from love or not at all. I have seen it, how anger makes a space for what I must call evil. ~ Kim Edwards

Stonewall Jackson was master of all he surveyed. Two Union forces were withdrawing from his front. There was a certain beautiful symmetry to it. The campaign, which started with a single enemy army pursuing Jackson southward through the valley, would end with two beaten Union armies withdrawing from him in a northerly direction. A week later, Jackson advised his mapmaker, Hotchkiss, to 'never take counsel of your fears.' A person who followed such advice would be doomed to a short life. ~ S.C. Gwynne

They had assumed the attack would be just another barely noted, barely investigated skirmish in South Central-- in short, a typical gang case-- until word got back to them that they had killed a police officer's son. The case was eminently solvable-- once the right kind of pressure was applied. Lyle Prideaux had called Skaggs "a hard man." But he was not exactly hard. He as just unequivocal. In his hands, the murders were elevated in law to what they were in fact: Atrocities that must be answered for every single time.

The world wasn't watching. The public, his superiors, and a large share of the country's thinking classes gave only glancing notice to the battle Skaggs had devoted his life to. But Skaggs didn't care; Skaggs turned his back to the parade.

And just as it is impossible to imagine that things in the South would not have been different if the legal system had operated differently-- had black men's lives, for example, been afforded profound value as measured by the response of legal authorities-- it is impossible to imagine that the thousands of young men who died on the streets of Los Angeles County during Skaggs's career would have done so had their killers anticipated a "John Skaggs Special" in every case.

If every murder and every serious assault against a black man on the streets were investigated with Skaggs's ceaseless vigor and determination-- investigated as if one's own child were the victim, or as if we, as a society, cou ~ Jill Leovy

Don't go acting like you're not in love...I say life's too short. If two people are in love, then don't hide it. ~ Karen Kingsbury