Live For Others Quotes

The way not to lead a monotonous life is to live for others. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

They only live, who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. "The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism. "Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self. "No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue. ~ Ayn Rand

So much must I live for others, that almost I am a stranger to myself. ~ Pope Innocent III

Do what makes you happy. It sounds so simple and yet it's so hard, because few of us do. We live out of fear. We live for others, their hopes and expectations. We do what makes everyone else happy. ~ Viola Shipman

And I, too, am the same… only there is no love in my heart, or desire for love, no interest in work, not contentment in myself. And how remote and impossible my old religious enthusiasms seem now… and my former abounding life! What once seemed so plain and right – that happiness lay in living for others – is unintelligible now. Why live for others, when life has not attractions even for oneself? ~ Leo Tolstoy

Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality. ~ Ayn Rand

don't think women have the right to a self. They are supposed to live for others. Qualities that are seen as normal and desirable in men - ambition, confidence, outspokenness - are perceived as selfish and aggressive in women, especially when they have children. ~ Katha Pollitt

Live for yourself and you will live in vain;
Live for others, and you will live again. ~ Bob Marley

As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be "as gods." We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. ~ Thomas Merton

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Live for others and love unconditionally to prove it.
People will never forget how you touch their heart with your love. ~ Debasish Mridha

On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness", having marked several passages that moved him:
"He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others ...
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ... ~ Jon Krakauer

Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty. ~ Louisa May Alcott

No one is self sufficient, No one has it all, No one knows it all, until you understand these facts and learn to live for others, you have not started living. ~ Bien Sufficient

Allah has names of Beauty: the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Gentle, and many others. But He also has Names of Rigour: the Overwhelming, the Just, the Avenger. The world in which we live exists as the interaction and the manifestation of all of the divine attributes. Hence it is a place of ease and of hardship, of joy and of sorrow. It has to be this way: a world in which there was only ease could not be a place in which we can discover ourselves to be true human beings. It is only by experiencing hardship, and loss, and bereavement, and disease, that we rise above our egos, and show that we can live for others, and for principles, rather than only for ourselves. ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

Human you are, and your purpose is to live for others as much as you live for yourself. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The man who lives for himself is a failure. Even if he gains much wealth, position or fortune, he is still a failure. The man who lives for others has achieved true success. A rich man who consecrates his wealth and his position to the good of humanity is a success. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

To have a great life, live for others. ~ Debasish Mridha

Learn how to love others from a dog and
how to live for others from a tree. ~ Luffina Lourduraj

To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his creed. It was not the basis of his creed. When he says, 'Forgive your enemies,' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than hate. In his own entreaty to the young man, 'Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor,' it is not of the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one with the artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at harvest-time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield. ~ Oscar Wilde

I firmly believe that all we send into the lives of other does indeed come back into our own. I also believe that Christmas is that wondrous time of year when each of us renews our faith that a better world is possible. By trying to live Christmas 12 months a year, we CAN make this world a better place to live - for others and for ourselves. ~ Mary Kay Ash

You need your own strength in this life. Your own purpose. You can't simply live for others. ~ Mark Waid

Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and cant live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality. ~ George Bernard Shaw

All of it pointed to a force stronger than the anxious formulas of religion: a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions - eating, drinking, walking - and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others. The stories illuminated the holiness located in mortal human bodies, and the promise that people could see God by cherishing all those different bodies the way God did. They spoke of a communion so much vaster than any church could contain: one I had sensed all my life could be expressed in the sharing of food, particularly with strangers. ~ Sara Miles

They who will live for others shall have great troubles, but they shall seem to them small. Those who will live for themselves shall have small troubles, but they shall seem to them great. ~ William Ralph Inge

The strength I touch and am, that strength I give. The central Light I reach so oft, I pass along the lighted Way to those who need that light. I seek to walk the ways of men as light and love and power. My strength and power come from the secret place and much I know. I live for others and must learn to lose myself in them. ~ Anonymous

The needs of the world are too big for us to be living such small lives. ~ Erwin McManus

.all the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women, and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature, to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but their affections. - The Subjection of Women ~ John Stuart Mill

If I live for self, I can only live for one; if I live for others, I
can live for 3,000,000,000. ~ Jack Hyles

To live for others was to live fully; to live only for yourself, a cold kind of death. ~ Joe Hill

The secret teaching was the bodhisattva ideal, to live for others, for the welfare of all beings. That's enlightenment, not some flashy state of luminosity. ~ Frederick Lenz

The purpose of life is to live for others. The moment you start living for yourself, you die before you time. ~ Chidiebere Prosper Agbugba

Change requires sacrifice of the self, which by itself is the fulfillment of the self to the being truly desiring for that change to become a reality in the world, but to all others this fulfillment would only appear to be either altruism or self-denial. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Forget yourself. Live for others. You will find your bliss. ~ Debasish Mridha

God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well. ~ Henri Nouwen

This epic masterpiece tells the world changing story of Jesus and inspires us to love and live for others just as He did. ~ Santiago "Jimmy" Mellado

You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.) ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Some people live in 20 years a billion times more than most people live in 80. ~ Abhijit Naskar

If you can't be real and firm with others about who you are, you will be doomed to a phony, plastic bullshit existence, where you only live for others. ~ Bryant McGill

What does a man live for but to have a girl, use his mind, practice his trade, drink a drink, read a book, and watch the martins wing it for the Amazon and the three-fingered sassafras turn red in October?
Art Immelmann is right. Man is not made for suffering, night sweats, and morning terrors. ~ Walker Percy

Each time I step on the basketball court, I never know what will happen. I live for the moment. I play for the moment. ~ Michael Jordan

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. ~ Ellen Goodman

You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave? ~ Emily Bronte

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once upon a time, powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.

The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king's decisions were absurd and resolved to take notice of them.

When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. The marched on the castle and called for his abdication.

In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: 'Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.'

And that was what they did: The king and queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such 'wisdom', why not allow him to rule the country?

The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern u ~ Paulo Coelho

I'm not a huge kind of visual director. For me, it's all about the acting. There's no greater buzz than working with actors and seeing what they can do and how much they can improve on what you'd written. That will always be on the top of my list. It's a real privilege to see it live before anyone else sees it. ~ Peter Mullan

It's healthier for your soul to live outside and above a degraded moral code than within and beneath one. ~ Kate Bornstein

It wasn't enough to be alive. Everyone needed something to live for.
Or die for. ~ Magnus Flyte

I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. It's because of them I'm doing it myself. ~ Albert Einstein

I realized that no one ever really dies. We always live on. I had experienced a God as real and tangible as we are. He knows our every heartache, yet allows us to experience and endure them for our growth. His is the highest form of love; He allows us to become what we will. He watches as we create who we are. He allows us to experience life in a way that makes us more like Him, divine creators of our own destiny. ~ Jeff Olsen

I believe nostalgia has many appearances and that it's not just the privilege of adults. I think children too can have nostalgia. It's one of mankind's most shared emotions. It's one of the things that makes us human. When you live, you lose things. It's a fact of life. So it's natural for everyone to have nostalgia. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it? ~ David Brin

We can reframe and recast our lives -- not with lies, not with deceptions, but with the truth of who we are and of who we are choosing to become. ~ Sandra Marinella

Our lives were short, and we never would have wanted to have them be shorter. Sometimes perspective comes far too late. You cannot trust yourself. You think you can, but you can't. Not because you are selfish. You cannot live for anyone else's sake. As much as you may want to, you can't stay alive just because other people want you alive. You cannot stay alive for your parents. You cannot stay alive for your friends. And you have no responsibility to stay alive for them. You have no responsibility to anyone but yourself to live. ~ David Levithan

Crocodiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does not change, - that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast - he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally understood among naturalists that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. ~ Thomas De Quincey

Home, to many of the people I interviewed, is a good, comfortable feeling about the place where they live, and a sense that their place is going to be theirs for a while....Home is any place, any experience that feeds his soul "in some positive way". ~ Bella DePaulo

Doublespeak has become so common in everyday living that we no longer pay any attention to it. Indeed, we seem to take it for granted, as if such language is the normal way of communicating, or more correctly, not communicating. Even worse, when we do notice it, we don't react. We don't protest when we're asked to check our packages at the desk "for your convenience" when it's not for our convenience at all but for someone else's convenience. We see advertisements for "deep-chilled chickens," "virgin vinyl," or "synthetic glass," but we don't question the language or the supposed quality of the product. We don't challenge the politicians who speak not of slums or ghettos but of the "inner city" or "substandard housing" where the "disadvantaged" live, thus avoiding any mention of the poor who have to live in filthy, poorly heated, ramshackle apartments or houses. ~ William D. Lutz

For to start life with just as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one to live comfortably without having to work - even if one has only just enough for oneself, not to speak of a family - is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated; for it means exemption and immunity from that chronic disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a plague; it is emancipation from that forced labor which is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favorable fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be, in the proper sense of the word, sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and able to say every morning, This day is my own. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

When the going gets tough ... the sensitive people smooth the path for others, and take the small children gently by the hand. We'll catch up to the tough in time ... ~ Tom Althouse

I know when I feel good when I play. There's a closeness with musicians you only get from playing live, even in the studio it's still playing live. For me, it's what expands my soul. ~ Ringo Starr

The world needs women who stop asking for permission from the principal. Permission to live their lives as they deeply know they often should. I think we still look to authority figures for validation, recognition, permission. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

We all deserve credit for this new surveillance state that we live in because we the people voted for the Patriot Act. Democrats and Republicans alike ... We voted for the people who voted for it, and then voted for the people who reauthorized it, then voted for the people who re-re-authorize d it. ~ Stephen Colbert

Do you realize why is it I'm so driven to operate within the Establishment? It's vengeance. 'Hope I die before I get old' is something I still have to live with, but not for the reason many people think. I have to be very, very vigilant not to become one of those people I despised. ~ Pete Townshend

I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy. ~ Black Elk

For he who has the audacity to determine who should live and who should die no longer serves the law but dictates the law. ~ Christopher Paolini

Asking for other's guidance helps you see what you may not be able to see. It's always important to check your ego and ask for help. ~ Ken Blanchard

Sufferings gladly borne for others convert more people than sermons. ~ Therese Of Lisieux

Strive for excellence, not perfection, because we don't live in a perfect world. ~ Joyce Meyer

I know we live in a very sexist world, and a lot of boys do nothing except get in trouble, until one day they grow up and dominate every aspect of society. But girls, at least while they're still girls and perform well, seem to do everything better for a while. Seem to get the attention. ~ Meg Wolitzer

Indirectly, though, he was present in many of our conversations. Once, for instance, my father asked me a series of questions that suddenly made me wonder whether I understood even my father whom I felt closer to than any man I have ever known. "You like to tell true stories, don't you?" he asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true." Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? "Only then will you understand what happened and why. "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. ~ Norman Maclean

All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we're going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many. ~ Fredrik Backman

Perform anonymous service. Whenever we do good for others anonymously, our sense of intrinsic worth and self-respect increases ... Selfless service has always been one of the most powerful methods of influence. ~ Stephen Covey

We have been telling each other tales of otherness, of life beyond the grave, for a long time; stories that prickle the flesh and make the shadows deeper and, most important, remind us that we live, and that there is something special, something unique and remarkable about the state of being alive. ~ Neil Gaiman

Each of us can and must shift our behavior according to our ability. For some, that means changing diet, shopping locally, or putting solar panels on their house. For others, it means using their voice to inspire transformative change. ~ James Balog

One of the hardest things to live with in any relationship is criticism, real or implied. Criticism is a form of humor for them, and they enjoy feeling superior when they see someone else's discomfort. ~ Robert E. Wells

We pray for our enemies; we seek to persuade those who hate us without cause to live conformably to the goodly precepts of Christ, that they may become partakers with us of the joyful hope of blessings from God, the Lord of all. ~ Justin Martyr

May it always be clear that only True Love can compete with any other Love in this world. When we give everything, we have nothing more to lose. And then fear, jealousy, boredom, and monotony disappear, and all that remains is the light from a void that does not frighten us, but brings us closer to one another. The light that always changes, and that is what makes it beautiful and full of surprises - not always those we hope for, but those we can live with. ~ Paulo Coelho

In a split second, she redefined perfection for him. His standards aligned to her exact proportions and measurements. No one else would ever live up to her. ~ Helen Hoang

Was I wilfully blind when I married Michael? Of course I was. I knew about his heart condition - everyone did. But I fell in love with him and decided it didn't matter. We were going to live for ever, somehow. Now I know that the fact that we had the same initials, were both expatriates, had gone to the same university, and were of medium build made the relationship highly determined. But I might have done the research and discovered his short life expectancy or talked to psychologists about the pain of grieving or read books about the sadness of widowhood. But I didn't do any of those things. I looked away from those sad certainties and pretended that they weren't there.
Love is blind, not, as in mythology, because Cupid's arrows are random but because, once struck by them, we are left blind. When we love someone, we see them as smarter, wittier, prettier, stronger than anyone else sees them. ~ Margaret Heffernan

To be in touch with God's truth is to be in touch with reality, and to live in accord with that reality makes for a better life (Ps. 119:2, 45). ~ Henry Cloud

Some of us are fated to live in a box from which there is only temporary release. We of the damned-up spirits, of the thwarted feelings, of the blocked hearts, and the pent-up thoughts, we who long to blast out, flood forth in a torrent of rage or joy or even madness, but there is nowhere for us to go, nowhere in the world because no one will have us as we are, and there is nothing to do except to embrace the secret pleasures of our sublimations, the arc of a sentence, the kiss of a rhyme, the image that forms on paper or canvas, the inner cantata, the cloistered embroidery, the dark and dreaming needlepoint from hell or heaven or purgatory or none of those three, but there must be some sound and fury from us, some clashing cymbals in the void. ~ Siri Hustvedt

The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place. ~ Dee Hock

Who can say if the thoughts you have in your mind as you read these words are the same thoughts I had in my mind as I typed them? We are different, you and I, and the qualia of our consciousnesses are as divergent as two stars at the ends of the universe.

And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly.

Does that thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human?

We live for such miracles. ~ Ken Liu