Living Is Not Enough Quotes

Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. ~ Hans Christian Andersen

Living is not enough; we must live an illuminated life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Just living is not enough... One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. - Hans Christian Andersen ~ Robyn Carr

We created order out of chaos. We made beauty and shaped history. We kept the magic of the realms safe in our grasp. How has it come to this?"

"You've not kept it safe. You've kept it to yourselves."

She shakes her head to dismiss the thought. "Gemma, you may still use the power for much good. With us to help you-"

"And what, pray, have you done to better the lot of others?" I ask. "You call each other sisters, but are we not all sisters? The seamstress ruining her eyesight to keep her children in porridge? The suffragists fighting for the vote? The girls younger than I who would ask for a living wage, whose working conditions are so deplorable they were locked in a burning factory? they could make use of your precious help."

She holds her head high. "We would have done so. In time."

I snort in disgust. "It is daunting to be a woman in any world. What good does our power do us when it must be kept secret?"

"You would prefer bold voices to illusion?"

"Yes. ~ Libba Bray

I'm an enormous product of my century, I'm a product of my upbringing. I was not aware of the fact that I was entering marriage with the highest set of expectations that humans have ever brought to the institution. It was really good to find that out. It doesn't have to be the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the moon and the stars - it can just be the moon. It's enough that it just can be what it is. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I am no vampire.I am Carpathian, and you are my lifemate. I will protect you with my life. I will always see to your happiness."
She took a deep breath for control, then let it escape slowly. "We are not lifemates.I did not choose." She held on to that fact, her only hope.
"We can discuss this at a more opportune time."
She nodded warily. "I'll meet you tomorrow then."
His silent laughter filled her mind. Low. Amused. Frustratingly male. "You will come with me now." His voice lowered an octave, became warm honey, compelling, hypnotic, so mesmerizing it was impossible to fight.
Savannah dropped her forehead against the muscles of his chest. Tears were burning in her eyes and throat. "I'm afraid of you,Gregori," she admitted painfully. "I can't live the life of a Carpathian. I'm like my mother. I'm too independent, and I need my own life."
"I know of your fears, ma petite. I know your every thought. The bond between us is strong enough to cross oceans.We can deal with your fears together. ~ Christine Feehan

If what you achieve today is equal to what you achieved yesterday, then you are at a loss. And if what you have achieved today is less than what you achieved yesterday, then you are deprived from the Almighty's blessings. Anyone who is not progressing, is in fact regressing, and if you are regressing, then you might as well be dead. ~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib

How do I love thee? wondered Orion. "Let me see. I love thee passionately and eternally ... obviously eternally-that goes without saying." Holly blinked sweat from her eyes. "Is he serious?" she called over her shoulder to Foaly. "Oh, absolutely," said the centaur "If he asks you to look for birthmarks, say no immediately." "Oh, I would never." Orion assured her. "Ladies don't look for birthmarks; that is work for jolly fellows like the Goodly Beast and myself. Ladies, like Miss Short, do enough by simply existing. They exude beauty, and that is enough." "I am not exuding anything." said Holly, through gritted teeth. Orion tapped her shoulder. "I beg to differ. You're exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It's pastel blue with little dolphins." Holly gripped the wheel tightly. "I'm going to be sick. Did he just say pastel blue?" "And dolphins, little ones," said Foaly. ~ Eoin Colfer

You know what's heartbreaking?" He slipped his hands into his pockets, as if to keep them from touching me. "It's not when bad things happen to you, or when your life turns out completely different from what you thought it would be, or when people let you down, or when the world knocks you down. What's heartbreaking is when you don't get back up, when you don't care enough to pick up the million broken pieces of you that are screaming to be put back together, and you just lie there, listening to a shattered chorus of yourself.
"What's heartbreaking is letting the love of your life walk away, because you can't give up your work or your home to go with her, because everything you love gets taken away from you. So I'm saying no to heartbreak. Right here, right now. This is me getting back up, crossing an ocean and coming straight to your door, Rodel.
"I can't unlove you. And I can't stop thinking about you. So I'm here to say the words because I never said them and that is what's breaking my heart. I'm not saying them to hear it back. I'm not saying them so we can have a happily ever after. I don't know where you're at, or if you still think about us, or if we can even make it work. I'm saying them for me. Because they've been growing in my chest with every breath I take, and I have to get them out or I'll explode. I love you, Rodel Emerson. That's what I'm here to say. This is me, unbreaking my heart. I know it's selfish and thoughtless and just plain arrogant to show ~ Leylah Attar

What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don't see the world, don't observe the world, don't contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don't distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until that happens, until a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living? ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Hollywood can be a really tough environment for anyone trying to make a living. Unfortunately for actors of color, namely Asian Americans, opportunities have been and remain substantially limited. One place this is not the case is on 'Hawaii Five-0,' where we have three Asian American series regulars and a landscape rich with diversity. ~ Ian Anthony Dale

For how many years have you gone through the house
shutting the windows,
while the rain was still five miles away
and veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the north
away from you
and you did not even know enough
to be sorry,
you were glad
those silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple,
were sweeping on, elsewhere,
violent and electric and uncontrollable
and will you find yourself finally wanting to forget
all enclosures, including
the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf, and will you
dash finally, frantically,
to the windows and haul them open and lean out
to the dark, silvered sky, to everything
that is beyond capture, shouting
i'm here, i'm here! now, now, now, now, now. ~ Mary Oliver

There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon. ~ John Stuart Mill

In the discussion at Phi Beta Sigma, a social fraternity I joined for a while, I expressed my anger about society and white racism. The other told me that I sounded like a guy named Donald Warden who was preaching Blackness at the Berkley campus of the University of California. He was the head of an organization called the Afro-American Association.

I went to Berkley to find Warden and hear what he was saying. The first member I met, though, was Maurice Dawson, one of Warden's tight partners. He turned me off with his arrogance. I had come searching for something, and he scorned me because I did not already know what I was seeking. I could not understand what he was saying about "Afro-Americans." The term was new to me. Dawson really put me down. "You know what an Afro-Cucan is?" "Yes" "You know what an Afro-Brazilian is?" "Yes" "Then why don't you know what an Afro-American is?" It may have been apparent to him, but not to me. But I was stilled interested.

Maurice taught me a lesson that I try to apply to the Black Panther Party today. I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because ~ Huey P. Newton

Today's righteous cause is religion. The gods are paying attention, after all. Wanting you to die in their name. Why? To prove your loyalty, of course. And what of their loyalty, you might wonder? Has your god blessed you and your life? Answered your every prayer? Given proof of its omnipotence? Where is this god's loyalty to you? Not loyal enough to spare your life which you give in its name. Not loyal enough to steer you past tragedy and grief, loss and misery. Not loyal enough to save your loved ones. Or the children who had to die as proof of that selfsame loyalty. No, today the sack is filled with religion. Tomorrow it will be something else. The joy lies in beating it. 'Poor ~ Steven Erikson

I wonder whether that is how we get to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking out loud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversation we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see. ~ Per Petterson

What's mine is now yours. I mean, really. It should be. You have my heart, and everything else is just bonus. You told me the shadows don't bother you, and I'm trusting you. I want to marry you, Gabby. I want to live with you. I want to hold on to you and never let you go. I love you. If you don't want any of that, I'll understand. I won't like it, but I'll understand. Only, you should know that I won't give up. I'll romance the hell out of you until you finally cave."
Her legs almost gave out. This was everything she'd ever secretly dreamed. "I love you, too. I love you and I want to marry you, live with you, be with you forever. You have my heart. Why not my life, too? But if you think that means you don't have to romance me, you are in for a rude awakening."
"Thank God." He strode to her, grabbed her up, and carried her upstairs. "I was prepared to get on my knees and beg if necessary."
She grinned. She just couldn't help herself. "Don't let me stop you."
He chuckled, and the beautiful sound washed over her. "Oh, I'll get on my knees soon enough; don't worry. ~ Gena Showalter

No force is strong enough to break you from the outside.
I found out sometimes ago that men are first broken within before they are overwhelmed on the outside.
Once you are bankrupt on Joy, it will be hard to keep yourself together. Life will do its best to wear you thin but you must not let it wear you out.
The fruit of joy is right there in you, let it blossom. ~ Paul Bamikole

Why should I go further than I am able? Is it not enough for you that I am perfect? ~ William Carlos Williams

Uh, oh. This room is big but not big enough to share with angry, smoking dragons. ~ Eunice Korczak

In my opinion the hectic and almost frantic pace of modern living is a clear sign of the fear we have of being and of life. And as long as this fear exists in a person's unconscious, he will run faster and do more so as not to feel his fear. ~ Alexander Lowen

Struggle is not optional - it's neurologically required: in order to get your skill circuit to fire optimally, you must by definition fire the circuit suboptimally; you must make mistakes and pay attention to those mistakes; you must slowly teach your circuit. You must also keep firing that circuit - i.e., practicing - in order to keep myelin functioning properly. After all, myelin is living tissue. ~ Daniel Coyle

My idea of working for a living is not going to office and earning a salary. It is to build a log house and catch my own fish and till some soil. ~ Girish Kohli

But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you. Or speak to the Earth, and let it teach you; And the fish of the sea declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this,
In whose hand is the life of every living thing,
And the breath of all mankind? ~ Job 12:7-10

Maybe he knows noting. Maybe it's that he feels it all, but whatever is happening to him, he understands that he lived before. He lived other lives, in different times. And why not? It's something he has often wondered about, sitting on the train in the morning, looking from the corner of his eye at the other commuter, wondering why.
Why am I not living that person's live? That man, there, with the sharp suit and the slightly stupid tie? Or that scruffy guy with the headphones? Or that woman, a little pregnant?
Often, as he sat fiddling with OneDegree, he has wondered why this life is the one he's had, and not one of the thousands of contacts passing through his device, or one of the countless others that could have been his.
Now he knows. He has been others. ~ Marcus Sedgwick

Can you fly?"

She couldn't keep the hushed wonder from her voice, and Nick smiled. "No. Too much weight. I can't focus the air pressure enough for that."

"What does air pressure have to do with anything?"

"Are you kidding? Air pressure is awesome."

She rolled her eyes. "You are such a nerd sometimes. You're lucky you're hot or you couldn't get away with saying things like air pressure is awesome."

"Seriously. Air pressure affects everything. Haven't you ever heard the expression nature abhors a vacuum?" He grinned.

"Actually, we were doing this experiment in class once where Dr. Cutter was trying to prove a point with a balloon, but I kept making it pop - "

"You are the only person alive who would use superpowers to be more dorky."

"They're not superpowers."

That sounded a lot like the difference between to-MAY-to and to-MAH-to to Quinn. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

THERE is such a thing as hunger for more than food, and that was the hunger I fed on. I was poor, my work unknown; often without meals; cold, too, in winter in my little studio on the West Side. But that was the least of it. When I talk about trouble, I am not talking about cold and hunger. There is another kind of suffering for the artist which is worse than anything a winter, or poverty, can do; it is more like a winter of the mind, in which the life of his genius, the living sap of his work, seems frozen and motionless, caught - perhaps forever - in a season of death; and who knows if spring will ever come again to set it free? It ~ Robert Nathan

A vision on its own is not enough. Hard work and dedication is required to make that vision a reality. ~ Strive Masiyiwa

We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don't just say I'm grown and ought to know. I don't. I'm fifty and I don't know nothing. What about it? Do I stay with him? I want to, I think. I want ... well, I didn't always ... now I want. I want some fat in this life."
"Wake up. Fat or lean, you got just one. This is it."
"You don't know either, do you?"
"I know enough to know how to behave."
"Is that it? Is that all it is?"
"Is that all what is?"
"Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?"
"Oh, Mama." Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth.
Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn't do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over but the talking?
- Violet Trace and Alice Manfred ~ Toni Morrison

You can drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror as long as nothing is ahead of you. Not enough software professionals are engaged in forward thinking. ~ Bill Joy

You can't live an obedient life and miss an adventure. Following the commands of Christ is not just about behavior. Behavior modification is not an end in itself in the New Testament. Transformation is about knowing the truth and the truth setting you free. ~ Beth Moore

It is not good enough to know why we are oppressed and by whom. We must join the struggle for what is right and just. Jesus does not promise that it will be an easy way to live life and His own life certainly points in a hard direction; but it does promise that we will be "satisfied" (not stuffed; but satisfied). He promises that by giving life we will find life - full, meaningful life as God meant it. ~ Cesar Chavez

It seems important to me that beginning writers ponder this - that since 1964, I have never had a book, story or poem rejected that was not later published. If you know what you are doing, eventually you will run into an editor who knows what he/she is doing. It may take years, but never give up. Writing is a lonely business not just because you have to sit alone in a room with your machinery for hours and hours every day, month after month, year after year, but because after all the blood, sweat, toil and tears you still have to find somebody who respects what you have written enough to leave it alone and print it. And, believe me, this remains true, whether the book is your first novel or your thirty-first. ~ Joseph Hansen

Young girls today are very mistaken to be thinking that their sense of self-worth and their acknowledgment of their beauty depends on whether a man will give that to them or not. Such naïveté! And so what will happen when the man changes his mind about her? Tells her she's not beautiful enough? That she's not good enough? Cheats on her? Leaves her? Then what happens? She will lose all her self-worth, she will think she is not good enough, she is not beautiful enough, because all of those feelings depended on the man in the first place! And along with the loss of the man, it will all be lost as well! Mothers, teach your daughters better. It pains me to see such naive innocence right under my nose! Such naïveté does no good for any girl. It is better for a girl to be worldly-wise and have street-smarts! That's what a girl needs to have in life! Not wide-eyed delusional innocence! The sense of self-worth and acknowledgment of being beautiful must not come from a man, it must come from inside the woman herself, men will come and men will go and their coming and going must not take an effect on the woman's sense of worth and beauty. ~ C. JoyBell C.

The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery.
Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream. ~ Anais Nin

The very best antidote for the New Age teachings is for Christians to enter into and live fully in the supernatural. This is certainly no time to draw back from supernatural living and retreat into a mere defense of orthodoxy. Because we have adopted this stance for the last half-century, we have opened the door for the New Age to fill the vacuum. There is a longing in the human heart for communication and a relationship with the Divine. Since the dawn of history, when God's people do not preach, proclaim, and model the genuine article, men and women will wander into whatever appears to offer the fulfillment of their spiritual quest. We need to cast aside our hesitation and proceed strongly forward, the Word and the Spirit as our unfailing guide. ~ Mark Virkler

It will probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. 1879 ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Is there a way to choose a few things and do them well rather than do a lot of things halfway or not at all? Can we accept the fact that we may be in a season when we need to say no with the understanding that the season will not last forever? ~ Stephen W. Smith

When the Babylonians began to chart the stars, they first of all grouped them together into constellations of lions, virgins, archers, and scorpions-shaped them into sub-assemblies, celestial holons. The first calendar-makers wove the linear thread of time into the hierarchic pattern of solar days, lunar months, stellar years, Olympic cycles. Similarly, the Greek astronomers broke up homogenous space into the hierarchy of the eight heavenly spheres, each equipped with its clockwork of epicycles.

We cannot help interpreting Nature as an organisation of parts-within-parts, because all living matter and all stable inorganic systems have a part-within-part architecture, which lends them articulation, coherence, and stability; and where the structure is not inherent or discernible, the mind provides it by projecting butterflies into the ink-blot and camels into the clouds. ~ Arthur Koestler

His Holiness leaned forward in his chair, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Isn't that interesting? Only this morning at the temple, we saw novice monks competing for admission to the monastery. There are too many novices and not enough places. But turning to the jail, nobody wants to go there, even though the conditions are easier than in a monastery. This proves that it is not so much the circumstances of our lives that make us happy or unhappy but the way we see them." There were murmurs of agreement. "Do we believe that, whatever our circumstances, we have the chance to live happy and meaningful ~ David Michie

In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power, but Arabs husband information and hold it especially tightly. U.S. trainers have often been surprised over the years by the fact that information provided to key personnel does not get much further than them. Having learned to perform some complicated procedure, an Arab technician knows that he is invaluable so long as he is the only one in a unit to have that knowledge; once he dispenses it to others he no longer is the only font of knowledge and his power dissipates. ~ Norvell B. De Atkine

Monogamy is not found in any social, group-living primate except - if the standard narrative is to be believed - us. ~ Christopher Ryan

One of the most important and rewarding ways in which we can serve our fellowmen is by living and sharing the principles of the gospel. We need to help those whom we seek to serve to know for themselves that God not only loves them but he is ever mindful of them and their needs. To teach our neighbors of the divinity of the gospel is a command reiterated by the Lord: 'It becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor' (D&C 88:81). ~ Spencer W. Kimball

I often feel like nobody," Skip says. "I ask myself: Why would you want to talk to me? Why would anyone want to talk to me? It comes on me suddenly, this feeling that I'm not anything...a person who has spent a lot of time in bed, who doesn't want to be anything."

I know what he is talking about, and this time, I tell him that. For years, I could not understand why anyone took me seriously. I could not understand how I managed to get into MIT or Harvard, why anyone would offer me a postdoctoral fellowship or a job. I could not understand why people kept turning to me after September 11. I didn't see myself as a person who couldn't get out of bed, but as a salesgirl in a coffee shop - the job I had as a teenager who was afraid to apply to college. My identity was stuck there for year.

"Inside me there is the person who wants to be dead," he says. "I can't advocate for myself. I can advocate very strongly for others, but not for myself...Sometimes I'm not sure that I exist. Is this really me - this person whom people want to consult about clergy sexual abuse? Or am I really the person who can't get out of bed? I've gotten better - I spend more of my time living in the present. But it takes a lot of effort to stay in the present - a lot of yoga and meditation. (195) ~ Jessica Stern

How do we negotiate between my history and yours? How would it be possible for us to recover our commonality, not the ambiguous imperial-humanist myth of those shard human (and indeed also most divine) attributes that are supposed to distinguish us absolutely from animals but, more significant, the imbrications of our various pasts and presents, the ineluctable relationships of shred and contested meanings, values, and material resources? It is necessary to assert our dense particularities, our lived and imagined differences; but can we afford to leave untheorized the question of how our differences are intertwined and, indeed, hierarchically organized? Could we, in other words, afford to have entirely different histories, to see ourselves living - and having lived - in entirely heterogenous and discrete spaces? ~ Satya P. Mohanty

Sometimes a person needs help because she needs it, not because her story is compelling or noble or strange enough to earn it, and sometimes you just do what you can. It doesn't make you any better, or any worse. It doesn't change you at all, except for the split second when you imagine that day when you will be the one who has to ask. ~ Leslie Jamison

I lost a piece of my heart and my soul with you. I buried the piece in the graveyard stretching from Yedikule to Edirnekapı where trees sustain the lives of the dead Istanbulites. Give love to love; love belongs to love. Remember in the times of roaming mortality on land and sea to take a bite of my apple when you let go of your fears. Scared humans are not alive; they inhibited their souls in the realm of the dead. Is it not funny that fear is supposed to help us survive, but it can make us stop living?! Is there a more dangerous threat than living, feeling alive, feeling full of life? Remember to keep the lines clear so you can have a piece of my apple and a cup of my coffee. ~ Rana Abdulfattah

Joy comes to us in moments - ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary. Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant. ~ Brene Brown

Love is difficult, because loving is not enough: We must, like God, ourselves be Love. ~ Angelus Silesius