Life Worth Living Quotes

The isness of things is well worth studying; but it is their whyness that makes life worth living. ~ William Beebe

Why?" He sounded bemused. He'd whispered the word.
She supposed he meant: why are you here? Because her mind answered with: Because I love you, and damn you for it. You have both made my life worth living and utterly ruined it, and I'm grateful that you did.
She smiled faintly. She would never say it. ~ Julie Anne Long

STEPAN: Innocence? Yes, maybe I know what that means. But I prefer to shut my eyes to it - and to shut others' eyes to it, for the time being - so that one day it may have a world-wide meaning. KALIAYEV: Well, you must feel very sure that day is coming if you repudiate everything that makes life worth living today, on its account. STEPAN: I am certain that that day is coming. KALIAYEV: No, you can't be as sure as that. ... Before it can be known which of us, you or I, is right, perhaps three generations will have to be sacrificed; there will have been bloody wars, and no less bloody revolutions. And by the time that all this blood has dried off the earth, you and I will long since have turned to dust. ~ Albert Camus

It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with. ~ Stephen Fry

So far, I've only discovered four things that make life worth living for me. My work is one of them." "What are the other three?" Jacob wanted to know. "Music, books, and sex," I said. "Not necessarily in that order." His eyebrows ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

Life is a journey of astonishing beauty, and this is what makes life worth living. ~ Debasish Mridha

Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it. ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink. Get to San Francisco. Get to San Francisco in defiance of your geography, your ancestry and the lonely change rattling sad excuses in your pocket. Fuel up on pie and diner coffee and mystic visions and the freedom of not knowing what's coming next except that you're burning the road to outrun it. ~ Jack Kerouac

Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living. ~ John Eldredge

He couldn't live a life worth saving, and he couldn't save a life worth living. ~ Jodi Picoult

Is life worth living? Aye, with the best of us, Heights of us, depths of us- Life is the test of us! ~ Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Can you remember, Acte ... how much easier our belief in Nero made life for us in the old days? And can you remember the paralysis, the numbness that seized the whole world when Nero died? Didn't you feel as if the world had grown bare and colorless all of a sudden? Those people on the Palatine have tried to steal our Nero from us, from you and me. Isn't splendid to think that we can show them they haven't succeeded? They have smashed his statues into splinters, erased his name from all the inscriptions, they even replaced his head on that huge statue in Rome with the peasant head of old Vespasian. Isn't it fine to teach them that all that hasn't been of the slightest use? Granted that they have been successful for a few years. For a few years they have actually managed to banish all imagination from the world, all enthusiasm, extravagance, everything that makes life worth living. But now, with our Nero, all these things are back again. ~ Lion Feuchtwanger

I can't say this too often - that a little humor can make life worth living. That has always been my credo. Somebody once asked me, 'What would you like your epitaph to be?' I've always said that I'd like it to be: He left people a little happier than they were when he came into the room. ~ Bennett Cerf

Everyone can access the parts of themselves that are great. I'm just a girl from New York City who decided to do this, after all. Rule the world! What's life worth living if you don't rule it? ~ Lady Gaga

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure. ~ Tom Robbins

That's what happens when you study men: you find mare's nests. I happen to believe that you can't study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything which makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors. ~ C.S. Lewis

It's okay to be afraid. But not okay if be afraid means you do nothing. You must not do nothing. That's not life worth living. ~ Emily X.R. Pan

This is for you, for your breath, whose absence would lessen a greater world. ~ Shaun Hick

Is life worth living? Like everybody else, I have many times asked that question, usually deciding negatively, because I am most likely to ask myself whether life is worth living, at times when I am convinced it isn't. One day, in one of my frequent, and probably incurable, scientific moments, it occurred to me to find out. For a month, at the end of each day, I set down a plus sign, or a minus sign, indicating that, in my opinion, life had, or had not, been worth living, that day. At the end of the month, I totted up, and I can't say that I was altogether pleased to learn that the pluses had won the game. It is not dignified to be optimistic. ~ Charles Fort

When things get tough, there are two things that make life worth living: Mozart, and quantum mechanics ~ Victor Frederick Weisskopf

Uncertainty doesn't make life worth living, quite, but it does make striving and gambling worth attempting. ~ Walter Kirn

The unexamined life is not worth living. But if all you're doing is examining, then you're not living! ~ Adam Leipzig

A life worth living, and work worth doing - that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education. ~ John Holt

We have an opportunity right now to step into a higher version of ourselves. We are living in a world with so many people hungry for love, to be "seen" and appreciated. Take a moment right now to adore someone, to love, to appreciate, to say "thank you", to activate kindness, to forgive, to say, "I'm sorry".
And don't forget to love on yourself. Nourish yourself. Nurture yourself. Pleasure yourself. Treat yourself.
You are alive. This moment is filled with magic. Make this life worth living every day. ~ Rosangel Perez

Nick... I hope one day you find you a woman who loves you like my Melissa loved me. Whatever you do, boy, don't turn your back on her. If she says she needs you for something, don't matter how stupid it sounds or what deadline you got, you go to her and you do it. Screw work or whatever else. In the end, the only things that matter are the people in your life. The ones who make your life worth living and whose smiles light up your world. Don't ever push them aside for fair-weather friends. Everything else is just cheap window dressing that you can replace. But once them people are gone..." He winced. "You can't buy back time, Nick. Ever. It's the only thing in life you can't get more of, and it's the one thing that will mercilessly tear you up when it's gone. It takes pity on no soul and no heart. And all those fools who tell you it gets easier in time are lying dumb-asses.
Losing someone you really love don't never get easier. You just go a few hours longer without breaking down. That's all... that's all. - Bubba ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Look - I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes. ~ Robert Fulghum

So many people come up to me and said "Nick, I don't have a purpose, I don't know what to do in my life." Let me ask you one thing, if you went through your life full of pain, full of tears, and at the end of your life, you actually save somebody's life, is your life worth living? Is the pain worth someone's life? If you could actually save somebody? Can you imagine? If you actually saw somebody nearly get run over by a car and you dive and get them out of the way of the car? For instance – an example, would that be worth living? You've saved somebody's life, I don't know. What about this? Let's say you have a problem in your life. And you want to give up now. Imagine if someone 10 years older who's gone through the exact same thing that you have – actually got through it and came to you and said, "you know what, I know how it feels. I've been there! I've been going through what you're going through now. But I'm still here. Would that not encourage you? Could that possibly save your life? Yes. Is that not a purpose worth living for? And that's why I believe in you because that is the greatest purpose! It's to love! Honest! It sounds corny - whatever you want to say, I don't care! I love people because there is freedom and power in loving people. ~ Nick Vujicic

A life worth living is a life worth recording. ~ Jim Rohn

If you play music with passion and love and honesty, then it will nourish your soul, heal your wounds and make your life worth living. Music is its own reward. ~ Sting

It isn't as hard to leave life behind, he thinks, once you've had a life worth living. ~ Claudia Gray

Is life worth living simply because you live, or is it worth more if you make life happen? ~ Jaycee Dugard

The only life worth living is the one we take responsibility for choosing. ~ Alexandra Stoddard

Any life worth living is going to have risks ~ Richelle Mead

A mundane lie hiding an exotic truth is deception; an exotic lie hiding a mundane truth is storytelling. Deception may be necessary to preserve life, but storytelling makes life worth living. ~ Christopher Buehlman

Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. ~ Carl Jung

A pleasurable life balances health, wealth and love. Without health, it is hard to enjoy wealth or love. Without wealth, it's difficult to maintain health or focus attention on the ones we love. Without love, a long healthy life and endless riches are nothing more than an empty hollow prison. Excessive focus on any one aspect to the detriment of the other two robs us of a life worth living. ~ Gamal Hennessy

It is only the promise of death that makes life worth living. ~ Robert E. Howard

He said how love was the sweetest expression of life. The one thing that made life worth living. Love made difficult tasks easy. Raising a family could be a great burden, but if there was love, the sacrifice was a pleasure. And when love matured into devotion then everything you did for your lover was a joy. You would give up your life to save those you loved. On the other hand, if love did not mature it could lead to bondage, to jealousy. If you loved someone, but felt possessive of them, you could end up treating them like an object that belonged to you. Just as bad, with your children, if you showered them with too much love, and never disciplined them, they would grow up weak and spoiled. At times, love had to be tough, or it could end up wrecking those dearest to you. ~ Christopher Pike

The world is a cruel mother, a matron of darkness, selfishness, greed, and misery. For most, their time suckling at her breast is naught but a scramble through stinging, tearing briars before a naked, shameful collapse as the flesh gives out. And yet in the bright eyes of every newborn, there lies a spark, a potential for goodness, the possibility of a life worth living. That spark deserves its chance. And though most of them will turn out to be as worthless as the parents who sired them, while the cruelty of the earth will tell them to release their innocence and join in the drawing of daggers, every now and then one manages to clutch to its beauty and refuses to release it into the dark. ~ Ed McDonald

People never change because they are under threat or under duress. Never. They change because they see something that makes their life seem valuable enough to start moving toward a life worth living. ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction and, therefore, there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would a well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Even if I never get out of Clover, even if I never get into Northwestern or write for the New Yorker, even if these are just delusions occupying my time, thank God they are, because a life without meaning, without drive or focus, without dreams or goals, isn't life worth living. ~ Chris Colfer

An unexamined life is not worth living, and an unexamined faith is not worth holding. ~ Ergun Caner

Because a life without meaning, without drive or focus, without dreams or goals, isn't a life worth living. ~ Chris Colfer

That's Delhi. When life gets too much for you all you need to do is to spend an hour at Nigambodh Ghat,watch the dead being put to flames and hear their kin wail for them. Then come home and down a couple of pegs of whisky. In Delhi, death and drink make life worth living, ~ Khushwant Singh

Have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore, there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. If that is the law of life, we must work it out in daily existence. Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

You can have great autonomy in the things you choose to learn and pursue on your own time. When you're learning things that interest you, challenge you, and make life worth living, getting an education can be blissful and stimulating. ~ Kate Bornstein

What is the fire that burns in your heart? If you are lucky enough to discover it, than by all means fan the flames and let the fire be the guiding light for a life worth living. ~ Mary Lou Retton

We are all victims of what is done to us. We can either use that as an excuse for failure, knowing that if we fail it isn't really our fault, or we can say, 'I want something better than that, I deserve something better than that, and i'm going to try to make myself a life worth living. ~ Howard Dully

Everything is cracked, everything is stained except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living. ~ Pierce Brown

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver. ~ William James

Because I don't want you forgetting how different our circumstances are. If you die, and I live, there's no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You're my whole life, I would never be happy again. It's different for you. I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. But there are other people who'd make your life worth living. ~ Suzanne Collins

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living. ~ David Attenborough

Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. ~ Paul Kalanithi

The moments that make life worth living are when things are at their worst and you find a way to laugh. ~ Amy Schumer

One never finds life worth living. One always has to make it work living. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

This is the only thing that makes life worth living. If you have succeeded in doing something you wanted to do, something that seemed impossible - well, then, make the most of it, with all your heart, to the very brim. ~ Ivan Turgenev

People from my first home say I'm brave. They tell me I'm strong. They pat me on the back and say, 'Way to go. Good job.' But the truth is, I am not really very brave; I am not really very strong; and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am simply doing what God has called me to do as a person who follows Him. He said to feed His sheep and He said to care for 'the least of these,' so that's what I'm doing, with the help of a lot people who make it possible and in the company of those who make my life worth living ~ Katie J. Davis

Friendships, along with love, make life worth living. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

What great literature does best is to show us those moments which make life worth living. ~ Marty Rubin

Of course if you stare at the sky long enough you're bound to get dizzy eventually ... the key is harnessing that sense of displacement, never forgetting it, so as to enable one to employ it at will. Simply walking through life without a sense of physical, if not emotional, disembowelment, is not a life worth living. ~ Dave Matthes

Wounds heal. Scars fade. Awful memories can be overwritten with better ones if given the chance. The little imperfections of our psyches become overshadowed by the people whose love we cherish because they cherish us despite our faults; physical, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise. This thing we call the human condition with all its bittersweet blind corners and senseless humor evolves from within ourselves and not because of some pre-ordained reverie we desire to cast in the constellations.
All in all it is what makes life worth living. ~ August Clearwing

The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest. ~ Russell Kirk

(W)hat is remarkable about the Greeks
even pre-philosophically
is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

As Socrates I believe said the unexamined life is not worth living. I believe that's true. I do believe that. ~ Joy Behar

Sane, reasonable, play-it-safe people are not sufficiently engaged in life to generate great stories. Instead, they sit back and wait for a leader-storyteller to come along and get them caught up in a life worth living. ~ Dan B. Allender

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living. ~ Harold Pinter

The healing power lies in the encounter with sensitive people; it makes life worth living. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. ~ Maria Popova

To find in ourselves what makes life worth living is risky business, for it means that once we know we must seek it. It also means that without it life will be valueless. ~ Marsha Sinetar

A warrior confronts colonialism with the truth in order to regenerate authenticity and recreate a life worth living and principles worth dying for. The struggle is to restore connections severed by the colonial machine. The victory is an integrated personality, a cohesive community, and the restoration of respectful and harmonious relationships. ~ Taiaiake Alfred

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite. ~ Richard Dawkins

Discrimination due to age is one of the great tragedies of modern life. The desire to work and be useful is what makes life worth living, and to be told your efforts are not needed because you are the wrong age is a crime. ~ Johnny Ball

It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having. ~ George Bernard Shaw

All that can be cherished from this world, all that makes life worth living is that which is mined from its bowels through your own toil, fashioned from its clay by your own craft, fired in the kiln of your heart. Oh, how precious, how delightful a feast, the life that has been forged by its own master! ~ Tzvi Freeman

I knew i would step back into having a faith at the centre of my life. I couldn't be bothered to question any more. I would rather have a Peggy-like faith than not. Simple. Forget theological debate, I'll just believe, because it makes me fell safer, connected, in purpose, loved and approved.
Life and loved can be pretty blooming messy sometimes. Humiliating even. And maybe that's the point. Relationships are meant to disrupt you, shake you up, cause upheaval. We're meant to love people, to be chaotically interconnected. It's what makes life worth living. ~ Miranda Hart

You might not remember everyday you live... But you'll remember the days that make life worth living for! ~ Danny Souza

The arts are what makes life worth living. You've got food, you've got shelter, yeah. But the things that make you laugh, make you cry, make you connect - make you love are communicated through the arts. They aren't extras. ~ Barack Obama

Our love was insane. Like smiling into the face of a firing squad.
God.
Why were we like this?
The answer soon revealed itself.
Because living without each other was not a life worth living.
Yes, we were crazy. And that was okay.
He would be my remedy. I would be his therapy.
Because we were crazy in love. ~ Belle Aurora

Mistakes can be very beautiful. Mistakes lead to surprises. Even joy. And joy makes life worth living. ~ Ryan Winfield

An orgasm is like the big bang, the explosion that creates life and makes life worth living. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Peace is not just the absence of war. True peace depends upon creating the opportunity that makes life worth living. And to do that, we must confront the common enemies of human beings: nuclear weapons and poverty; ignorance and disease. ~ Barack Obama

If life is too easy, is it worth living? ~ Debasish Mridha

Is life worth living in the jaws of society's trash can for misfit minds? What can I possibly achieve or contribute to mankind in this steel and concrete box with a damn loud laughing wall that moves? Just give up? ~ Daniel Keyes

In order to live a life worth leading, you must first lead a life worth living. ~ Chief Long Spear Who Hunts Beavers

I know many lives worth living. ~ Mary Oliver

So far as he was concerned, this had been a bang-up night. Dynamite, a nice brawl, free brandy, and getting to scare the piss out of someone. It was the simple things that made his life worth living. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Is life worth living? Yes, so long
As Spring revives the year,
And hails us with the cuckoo's song,
To show that she is here; ~ Alfred Austin

If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor - poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living. ~ Herbert Newton Casson

Laughter and love make life worth living! ~ Donna J. Schmidt

I'm not convinced that your date of death is the date carved on your tombstone. Most people die long before that. We start dying when we have nothing worth living for. And we don't really start living until we find something worth dying for. Ironically, discovering something worth dying for is what makes life worth living. ~ Mark Batterson

That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. (2) That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. (3) That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

But, back of this, still broods silently the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart, the stirring, unguided might of powerful human souls who have lost the guiding star of the past and are seeking in the great night a new religious ideal. Some day the Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of 10,000,000 souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living - Liberty, Justice and Right - is marked "For White People Only". ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Denying yourself a life of personal freedom is denying yourself of a life worth living. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

Hope makes life worth living. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

True love is what makes life worth living. ~ D.F. Jones

Does sex make life worth living? Didn't you say, the other day, 'Our lives are only as good as our orgasms'? ~ Hanif Kureishi

beginnings are usually scary and sending are sad, but its everything inbetween that makes life worth living ~ Lauren Vargo

It's not arrogant to say that you can't figure out the answers to the universe with your internal faith. It's not arrogant to know that there's no omniscient, omnipotent prime mover in the universe who loves you personally. It's not sad to feel that life and the love of your real friends and family is more than enough to make life worth living. Isn't it much sadder to feel that there is a more important love required than the love of the people who have chosen to spend their limited time with you? ~ Penn Jillette