Life That Matters Quotes

People aren't born good or bad. It's the way you live your life that matters and how many people you inspire and empower after you're gone. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

I love the idea of the big life - the life that matters, the life that makes a difference. The life where stuff happens, where people take action. The opposite of the life where the girl can't even speak to the boy she likes; the opposite of the life where the friends aren't even good friends, and lots of days are wasted away feeling bored and kind of okay, like nothing matters much. ~ E. Lockhart

A woman's life may die away in the fore of self-hatred for complexes can bite hard and, at least for a time, successfully frighten her away from coming too near the work or life that matters to her ... Many years are spent not going, not moving, not learning, not finding out, not obtaining, not taking on, not becoming. The vision a woman has for her own life can also be decimated at someone else's jealousy or someone's plain out destructiveness towards her family, mentors, teachers, and friends are not supposed to be destructive if and when they feel envy, but some decidedly are, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. No woman can afford to let her creative life hang by a thread while she serves an antagonistic love relationship , parent, teacher or friend. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We might not be the ones to change the world. We might not belong to the few that "put a ding in the universe." We might not be something the whole world would celebrate. But...In the little corners that we live; in the lives that we've played a part in, we should be nothing but unforgettable. ~ Nesta Jojoe Erskine

It wasn't the New World that mattered ... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters. ~ Amit Ray

It's the process of writing and life that matters.Too many writers have written great books and gone insane or alcoholic or killed themselves. This process teaches about sanity. We are trying to become sane along with our poems and stories. ~ Natalie Goldberg

It is not the longevity of life that matters the most; it is the beauty of life. ~ Debasish Mridha

It is not the length of life that matters. It's the depth. But while burrowing, keep the sun above you. ~ Matt Haig

We all can't paint like Van Gogh. We might not be the ones who found cure for cancer or invented flying shoes but it doesn't mean we can't own a spot in the sands of time. ~ Nesta Jojoe Erskine

It is really not how much you can get out of life that matters; it is how much you can put into it that counts. What will you contribute to life today? ~ Bill Phillips

It's not what you accomplish in life that matters; it's what you overcome. ~ Johnny Miller

Precisely because a living being may die, it is necessary to care for that being so that it may live. Only under conditions in which the loss would matter does the value of the life appear. Thus, grievability is a presupposition for the life that matters. ~ Judith Butler

Unless your sober life is more meaningful than your drunk life, you're going to relapse. YOU create the life that matters. ~ Toni Sorenson

My point is when the odds are fifty-fifty in an area of your life that matters, you change your behavior. ~ Craig Groeschel

For me, everything is about Jesus and Father and the Holy Spirit, and relationships, and life is an adventure of faith lived one day at a time. Any aspirations, visions and dreams died a long time ago and I have absolutely no interest in resurrecting them (they would stink by now anyway). I have finally figured out that I have nothing to lose by living a life of faith. I know more joy every minute of every day than seems appropriate, but I love the wastefulness of my Father's grace and presence. For me, everything in my life that matters, is perfect! ~ William P. Young

You will have to make up for the smallness of your size by your courage and selfless devotion to duty, for it is not life that matters, but the courage, fortitude and determination you bring to it. ~ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

When I'm out on a long run," she continued, "the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going blehblehbleh all the time. Everything quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow. It's jus time and the movement and the motion.That's what love
just being a barbarian, running through the woods. ~ Christopher McDougall

It's not what happens to you in life that matters; what matters is how you deal with it! ~ Terry Riley

Make a difference. Live a life that matters. ~ Frank McKinney

If I could wish one thing for my children, it would be wisdom. If they have wisdom, then they'll know how to seek and find everything else in life that matters. ~ Donna Gentry Morton

We want to leave a legacy with who we are and what we do. We want to grow a life that matters. We can. When we eat a diet of fruit and serve up that diet to those around us, we can grow a life that matters. ~ Elisa Morgan

You're beautiful but you don't know it. You're my sister and I love you but I sometimes think to myself that you don't love me, consider what is important to my soul to be significant to yours. You can't see me. I am invisible to you. We don't share anything anymore like we used to do in childhood. The only things we have in common are our parents, a brother. We're not children anymore. It hurts (the pain). It hurts (this long distance relationship but most of all the separation). For me it hurts. For you, it is only your life that matters. Well, for me, it is going to take a miracle for this to go away. The ingredient required for this miracle is only one thing and it's love. The compulsion of love. The idea of love. The journey towards love. I've realized this. If you live in poverty, that is, if your soul lives in poverty you're forever walking away from it with a hunger (in your soul) but when you have love there is no more Hiroshimas, Nagasakis, Sarajevos, and loneliness. There is only light and with light comes acceptance. There is only breath,. ~ Abigail George

It is not the life that matters, but the journey. ~ Paulo Coelho

Tolstoy will live forever. Some people do. But that's not enough. It's not the length of life that matters--just the depth of it. The chances we take. The paths we choose. How we go on after our hearts break. Hearts always break. And so we bend with our hearts. And we sway. But in the end--what matters is that we loved and lived ~ Marjorie M. Liu

People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this qualification, obviously, did not go far enough. It was quite possible that the central event of your life could be something that didn't happen, or something you thought didn't happen. Otherwise there'd be no need for fiction, there'd only be memoirs and histories ... ~ Geoff Dyer

When you live each day with intentionality, there's almost no limit to what you can do. You can transform yourself, your family, your community, and your nation. When enough people do that, they can change the world. When you intentionally use your everyday life to bring about positive change in the lives of others, you begin to live a life that matters. ~ John C. Maxwell

I thought, man, if you could run 100 miles, you'd be in this Zen state. You'd be the f**king Buddha. Bringing peace and a smile to the world. In my case, it didn't work. I'm the same old punk ass as ever. But there's always this hope that it'll turn you into the person you want to be. You know, like a better, more peaceful person. And when I'm out on a long run, the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going 'bleh bleh bleh bleh.' Everything just quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow ~ Jenn Shelton

We all just want a life that matters!! ~ Dianna Donnely

The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that lives invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last. ~ Madeleine Thien

We are married."
"We're about to get divorced." ...
"No." He licked up her ear to bite the shell.
She shivered in response. "Yes."
"Nope." His palm spread out across her bare midriff. "I may have screwed up, and we'll find out why, but I won't hurt you again. You're mine, angel. The only thing in life that matters. ~ Rebecca Zanetti

It is not how long it takes one to succeed in life that matters but how well. ~ Abdulazeez Henry Musa

An important decision I made was to resist playing the Blame Game. The day I realized that I am in charge of how I will approach problems in my life, that things will turn out better or worse because of me and nobody else, that was the day I knew I would be a happier and healthier person. And that was the day I knew I could truly build a life that matters. ~ Steve Goodier

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters. ~ Natalie Goldberg

It's not the men in your life that matters, it's the life in your men. ~ Mae West

If you tell me that I have to write the story of my life, I would be very quick to tell you that God has already written it. What I have to do is to quit playing editor. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Staying in the past does not help, my friend. Everything passes you by while you're trying to relive that one little slice of golden apple that you had. ~ Ken Dereste Dorcely

Everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne. ~ Bette Davis

I've started to look at life differently. When you're thanking God for every little you - every meal, every time you wake up, every time you take a sip of water - you can't help but be more thankful for life itself, for the unlikely and miraculous fact that you exist at all. ~ A. J. Jacobs

Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her
and you ... And like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing
as he knew of me
that he will protect you with his life. I love you forever, Brianna. I know whose child you truly are. With all my love, Dad. ~ Diana Gabaldon

When you read something, it's a movie in your mind and such a personal experience. What we're trying to do is to bring a consensus version of that to life and make as many people happy as we can. ~ Katherine McNamara

Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

It came to me with great force that I was wasting my life, that I was wasting it by living from day to day in a state of waiting, that I had in effect given myself up as a prisoner to this war. ~ J.M. Coetzee

This was the first of the St. Augustines. Previous memos had borne messages from Zwingli, Lévi-Strauss, Rilke, Chekhov, Tillich, William Blake, Charles Olson and a Kiowa chief named Satanta. Naturally the person responsible for these messages became known throughout the company as the Mad Memo-Writer. I never referred to him that way because it was much too obvious a name. I called him Trotsky. There was no special reason for choosing Trotsky; it just seemed to fit. I wondered if he was someone I knew. Everybody seemed to think he was probably a small grotesque man who had suffered many disappointments in life, who despised the vast impersonal structure of the network and who was employed in our forwarding department, the traditional repository for all sex offenders, mutants and vegetarians. They said he was most likely a foreigner who lived in a rooming house in Red Hook; he spent his nights reading an eight-volume treatise on abnormal psychology, in small type, and he told his grocer he had been a Talmudic scholar in the old country. This was the consensus and maybe it had a certain logic. But I found more satisfaction in believing that Trotsky was one of our top executives. He made eighty thousand dollars a year and stole paper clips from the office. ~ Don DeLillo

I ended up becoming so self-conscious that my songs stopped being about my life and started being about what people thought of my music. And that was really bad. ~ Liz Phair

All persons who are enthusiastic that they should transcend the other animals ought to strive with the utmost effort not to pass through a life of silence, like cattle, which nature has fashioned to be prone and obedient to their stomachs. ~ Sallust

To say that life is nothing but a property of certain peculiar combinations of atoms is like saying that Shakespeare's Hamlet is nothing but a property of a peculiar combination of letters. ~ Ernst F. Schumacher

By praising God in the worst circumstances, we fulfill the reason for our very creation. We were made to worship, and we spend much of our entire lives for fulfillment of that purpose, seeking the completion of that desire in all the wrong ways. But when we praise God in less-than- pleasing situations, He is magnified beyond measure. This praise is life-transforming. When we praise God, our hearts and lives are changed. ~ Rachel Wojnarowski

The reason for privacy is not so that people will not know you go to the bathroom. It's to allow certain things to go on that you don't want other people to know about, when all is said and done. But the things I don't want other people to know about are not my sex life. ~ Samuel R. Delany

You can't control the weather, but that doesn't stop some people from trying. ~ Frank Sonnenberg

Any master skill in practice is about comprehending myriad elements and fitting them together in inspired ways that satisfy the objective. ~ Marian Deegan

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way. ~ Havelock Ellis

You can hope for a miracle in your life, or you realize that your life is the miracle. ~ Robert Breault

We give them material things and take delight in their delight in possessions. Then we hope that somewhere down the line they will see that a life worth living is found only in knowing and serving God. ~ Tedd Tripp

I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I were dissolving ... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist. ~ John Keats

Don't be afraid of what others may think. Your creativity belongs to you, your inspiration, your imagination is all yours. Be passionate and write with fire in your words. Allow no boundaries to what you feel and believe. The spark that drives you to write is the fuel for your desire to create great novels. Know that you have the spirit within. ~ Sheila Renee Parker

Look in the heart and write ... The man who writes like that, without pride or artifice, as it were for himself, is in reality speaking for humanity. Humanity will recognize itself in him, because it is human nature that has inspired the discourse. Life recognizes life! ~ Antonin Sertillanges

From the beginning ... I wanted to build a company that could sustain not for two years or four years or even ten years but be something that really matters over time the way Amazon and Google and others have. ~ Mark Pincus

And I would absolutely not be the same person if you never existed" I lifted my head and remainded still with anticipation. "We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning ... the reason behind just about everything I do-and I would never want to change that. ~ Rebecca Donovan

I've never had a love letter before. Not from anyone. It is a most wonderful thing to receive. I realise that it makes a present to me of your life, not just your love. ~ Anthony McDonald

Life is a great university for the unfolding of the mind, for developing character. In choosing our life work, when we are free to choose, we should remember this, and choose that which will call the biggest man or woman out of us and not that from which we can coin the most dollars. ~ Orison Swett Marden

Well, a man's life is divided into two parts: there is his work and there is his own private life. Two small worlds which he has to make for himself. And it is only when he is old, and the time for decision is over, that he may realize he did not need to neglect one for the other. For if he concentrated too much on one of them, then he really confused their purposes. He had thought that either a successful career was life, or life itself was a career. He hadn't realized that his work and his own private life should be given the same amount of thought, that they should grow along with each other, each influencing the other, each developing the other. Without that balance, he will find himself an incomplete man. That's the tragic thing about age: to realize you have somehow never seen what is happiness until it was too late to start building it up. For it has to be built. Pleasure is a simple thing: you can choose it, buy it, even have it as a gift. It only depends on your taste. But happiness is much more complicated; you have to build it yourself. ~ Helen MacInnes

Deliberately, she visualized the living room of their Flynders farmhouse, then, blurring that bright familiar place, another room began to form: the skimpy parlor of her childhood, her father and a friend speaking late into the evening while she lay drowsily on the Victorian sofa, listening to the drone of the men's low voices, feeling on her cheek the sting of a horsehair which had worked its way up through the black upholstery, safe and dreaming of the brilliance of her own true grown-up life to come.

She put her hand on her cheek and touched the place where the horsehair had pricked, and she gasped at the force of a memory that could, in the space of a breath taken and released, expunge the distance between sleepy child and exhausted adult, as though, she thought, it had taken all these years to climb the stairs to bed. ~ Paula Fox

Many other artists who sing about hope think that it is something every single person carries within himself. I'm not so sure if that's true. For me, hope is the little light guiding you the way, which reminds you that life does have a sense, that you have goals. To believe in that is often more easily said than done. ~ Ville Valo

Your true family.

But what did that mean? Was family the ones you were born to, or the ones who took you in? Did the first years of his life weigh more than the rest?

Strange thing about forgetting spells.

Rhy was his brother.

They fade on their own.

London was his home.

Unless we don't let go." ~ V.E Schwab

Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to the stars by night, and to think that the dead are there, and not in graves ~ Charles Dickens

The fundamental principle [of settlement work] remains: that people shall take up their residence in industrial communities, giving what they may have of public spirit, and partaking of the life about them; preserving their identity as individuals and endeavoring to keep the settlement free from the institutional form of philanthropic work ... the relationship is reciprocal ... ~ Lillian Wald

The very longing for contentment that ought to drive us to simplicity of life and labors of love contents itself instead with the broken cisterns of prosperity and comfort. ~ John Piper

My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now
to be given, not merely to be sought and returned. ~ Alice McDermott

Dear friends,
You know that no matter what you are told in life you are always worth it, no matter how hard you fall or how softly you land. No person is really worth your tears if they never mattered in the first place, if they say things that make you cry then they were never really real. So why cry over what was never real? Love yourself in a healthy way and no one can ever ruin your day, just be yourself and never put what you love away on a self. Free yourself, be yourself, always be free. ~ Myself

As long as she is near or within his power to reach, he will be drawn to her, leaving less of him for others and that's why she had to leave. She knew, despite her own great desire, that there are consequences and responsibilities that are more important and life-altering than personal feelings. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

If we believe that this particular pain is the one that will push the baby out of the womb and into our arms, we somehow try to make a place for that pain in our heart. Pain is still there: excruciating, terrible pain. But at the moment of birth, we rarely feel betrayal or rage; we somehow feel that this is simply pain that has come with life. ~ Wayne Muller

We need radical dietary improvement, and the earlier in life that change is made, the better. Just following a vegan diet or eating a few more vegetables is not enough. ~ Joel Fuhrman

Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. All anyone can do is to point out ways and means which have been helpful to others. Perhaps they will serve as suggestions to stimulate your own thinking until you know what it is that will fulfill you, will help you to find out what you want to do with your life. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The organist was almost at the end of the anthem's long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.

The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed. ~ Susan Howatch