Living Long Quotes

The Lord is not so concerned about what we study or what profession we follow as long as it is an honest living. ~ Eldred G. Smith

They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keep them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink-
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
It rots the senses in the head!
It kills imagination dead!
It clogs and clutters up the mind!
It makes a child so dull and blind
He can no longer understand
A fantasy, a fairyland!
His brain becomes as soft as cheese!
His powers of thinking rust and freeze!
He cannot think-he only sees!
'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read,
And read and read, and then proceed
To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!...
Oh books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw ~ Roald Dahl

Bury it with me. Time was I thought it was a blessing and a curse. But it's only a curse, and I ain't about to curse some other poor bastard with it. Time was I thought it was reward and punishment both. But this is the only reward for men like us.' And Whirrun nodded down towards the bloody spear-shaft. 'This or … just living long enough to become nothing worth talking of. Put it in the mud, Craw.' And he winced as he heaved the grip into Craw's limp hand and pressed his dirty fingers around it.
'I will.'
'Least I won't have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?'
'Every sword's a weight to carry. Men don't see that when they pick 'em up. But they get heavier with time. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Dancing every night enhances a positive energy. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

#Note: There is a wonder to life. Pursue it. Hunt for it. Your goal is not to live long ... it's to live! ~ Milan Jed

It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. ~ Marilynne Robinson

You'll never fly, if you're too scared of the height,
You'll never live if you're just too scared to die,
Everybody wants heaven, I know
But darling freedom ain't free, it's a long road
You'll never find your place up there in the sky
If you never say goodbye. ~ Hardwell & Dyro & Bright Lights

Living appears good, long, and tiresome, but it is way too short than a single stroke of lightning. ~ Aniruddha Sastikar

The modern rise of Alzheimer's Disease in the twentieth century is not a sign of failure. It's a sign of success. Success in living long enough to see that disease expressed. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. ~ Roald Dahl

It's that short-lived happiness, which empowers us to bear; long-lasting pain in living. ~ Aniruddha Sastikar

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between. ~ Don DeLillo

Throughout this life, you can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath. ~ Huangbo Xiyun

The Existentially Preoccupied Long Distance Runner

Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long
with each mile I can feel the pain of my own awareness,
my own heightened consciousness of what ails me,
the ills of the world,
the limitations of our existence,
the losses we must endure,
the superficial interactions.

Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long
that I can feel all of these feelings seep out of the pours of my own skin,
the sweat cleansing my very being,
my awareness of beauty heightened,
the experience of joy possible,
each mile, each minute, ridding me of these feelings,
washing away the illusions,
showing me the truth.

Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long…
until finally I feel free…
until finally I AM free… ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

What do you want to do with your life, then? is often the question I'm asked.
To be honest, I don't know. I really don't.
Mainly because I don't see myself living long enough for that to make much of a difference. ~ Nenia Campbell

But he'd learned long ago that a life lived without risks pretty much wasn't worth living. Life rewarded courage, even when that first step was taken neck-deep in fear. ~ Tamera Alexander

The secret to living long is to have something to live for. ~ David Levithan

She closed one eye and looked at me and said, "I know there is a blessing in this somewhere."
It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Pretty sure it was me." Simi grinned. "The Simi has that effect or is it affect on people? Affect. Effect. What is this difference between those two words and really, does it matter? Some people get so testy when you misuse a word. But I likes doing it. Language should be fun and so long as people know what you mean, what difference does it make? Really. Really. Really. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Meanwhile, in the expansiveness of her joy, the Moon filled all of the room like a phosphoric atmosphere, like a luminous poison; and all of that living light thought and said: You will be eternally subject to the influence of my kiss. You will be beautiful in my manner. You will love what I love and who loves me: water, the clouds, silence, and the night; the immense, green sea; formless and multiform water; the place where you will not be; the lover you will not know; monstrous flowers; perfumes that make you delirious; cats who swoon on pianos, and who moan like women, with a hoarse, gentle voice! ~ Charles Baudelaire

I wanted to relay a first hand experience to an audience possibly struggling to understand just what living with an autoimmune condition means," Connery says. "It's a difficult journey and very much misunderstood by our friends and family – I hope this book can help to change that. ~ Richard Connery

I hardly seem yet," returned Charles Darnay, "to belong to this world again."
"I don't wonder at it; it's not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. ~ Charles Dickens

The German pilot had come up and was standing by smiling as Mr. Parker Pyne finished answering a long interrogation which he had not understood.
"What have I said?" he asked of the German
"That your father's Christian name is Tourist, that your profession is Charles, that the maiden name of your mother is Baghdad, and that you have come from Harriet. ~ Agatha Christie

I'd love to remain a secret and still work, but I also want people to see the movies I'm in and get a higher profile because of that. I like to think that as long as you continue choosing diverse roles, you can avoid becoming predictable. ~ Christian Bale

It hardens you, living in that place. It holds up a mirror and shows you the very worst parts of humanity. It changes people. ~ Amy Ewing

Not far away lay the big cannons that had held Ulysses Grant at bay for fifty siege days while the citizens of the town ate rat flesh and clung to their long-cherished beliefs. How many had died in that lost cause? Dr. Tarver wondered. Fifty thousand casualties at Gettysburg alone, and for what? To free the slaves who built this house? To preserve the Union? Had Stonewall Jackson died to create a nation of couch potatoes ignorant of their own history and incapable of simple mathematics? If those brave soldiers in blue and gray had seen what lay in the future, they would have laid down their muskets and walked home to their farms. ~ Greg Iles

Collaboration is necessary for making great art. Everybody has a perspective on what they think or feel the material should ultimately look like when it hits the screen. ~ Nia Long

Sometimes we just have to stop and feel the pulse of the Earth, the rhythm of the seasons and the internal voice that was once our childhood friend. ~ Fennel Hudson

I really am opinionated, but not for long. I have found myself coming off of what I think of something because the guy I'm talking to makes better sense than I am. I have so many points of view, I can't keep track of 'em, because I talk to too many people ... I'm not so opinionated that I won't budge. ~ Jerry Lewis

I'm in a period of growth and expansion. I'm taking long, hard looks at the world and what's happening in it, analyzing and thinking. I'm trying to become acquainted with the universe - with the part of it I occupy - and trying to settle, for myself, what my relationship with it is. ~ Gene Roddenberry

I worked with Jackie Chan for a long time, and seeing how much pain he's in, I realized that that might not be a sustainable career for me. So I started to develop my career as a dramatic actor rather than as an action actor. ~ Daniel Wu

Hypocrisy is saying we believe something, then living as if we didn't. Hypocrisy is preaching and not practicing. It says do as I say not as I do. It's insincerity wearing a mask of sincerity. ~ Stephen Altrogge

The problem [with genetic research] is, we're just starting down this path, feeling our way in the dark. We have a small lantern in the form of a gene, but the lantern doesn't penetrate more than a couple of hundred feet. We don't know whether we're going to encounter chasms, rock walls or mountain ranges along the way. We don't even know how long the path is. ~ Francis Collins

And as I stare at the girl of my dreams, staring back at me, I marvel at how the universe can know better than we know. How everything can change in one moment, one second, one blink of an eye. How that everything can be all we ever hoped for and more.
Our very own crystal clearness after a long stretch of sunless cold. ~ Katie Klein

It is vital to avoid mediocrity - living a life of deadness in someone else's threadbare world. ~ Miriam A. Walker

Pocket Poem
If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I'd opened it a thousand times
to see if what I'd written here was right,
it's all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me. ~ Ted Kooser

My terrifying struggle to stay alive became somehow routine. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast, tend my crops, fix broken stuff, eat lunch, answer e-mail, watch TV, eat dinner, go to bed. The life of a modern farmer. Then I was a trucker, doing a long haul across the world. And finally, a construction worker, rebuilding a ship in ways no one ever considered before this. ~ Andy Weir

What is certain is that I am not a Marxist, as someone said a long time ago, let us recall, in a witticism reported by Engels. Must we still cite Marx as an authority in order to say "I am not a Marxist"? ~ Jacques Derrida

He was seeing the full extent of her failure - in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him. ~ Ayn Rand

He can't live once more through those fifteen years, those fifteen years whose half-life have been so long and so resonant, that have determined everything he had become and done. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

What a land. What power these rivers were already yielding, far beyond her sight. Even a map of this country
lines arranged in an arbitrary way on a long rectangular piece of paper
stirs the imagination beyond imagination, she thought, looking at the map, as other lines differently arranged in relation to each other have not the power to stir. Each name on the map says We reached this point, by broken trail and mountains and water; and when we reached it, thus and thus we named it. ~ Ethel Wilson

I think when I was in my early twenties and middle twenties I didn't even know I wasn't living up to my potential. A couple of friends told me I wasn't and told me to get my act together, and it made a huge impact on me. ~ Shirley Maclaine

A long time ago. I came to the understanding that all men are friends by convenience and enemies by choice. ~ John Christopher

It is not possible to remake this country, to democratize it, humanize it, make it serious, as long as we have teenagers killing people for play and offending life, destroying the dream, and making love unviable. If education alone cannot transform society, without it society cannot change either. ~ Paulo Freire

All the shitty stuff people do to themselves ... it can all be the same thing, you know? Just a way to drown out your own voice. To kill your memories without having to kill yourself. ~ Isaac Marion

Some say love, is a river, that drowns the tender reed
Some say love, is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, is a hunger, and endless aching need
I say love, is a flower, and you it's only seed

It's the heart afraid on breaking, that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes a chance
It's the one who won't be taken, who can never seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose

Bette Midler - The Rose ~ Bette Midler

Let's be very clear: Living 'unforgiven' is not the sole domain of blacks. It can be found in any successful person. ~ John Ridley

Life is a rich literature. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society. ~ Yo-Yo Ma

... You see, my dear friend, I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The essential quality of an animal is that it seeks its own living, whereas a vegetable has its living brought to it. ~ Henry Mayhew

I have no idea how it got so big. I was just trying to find something to do while I was living in Boulder, Colorado, which isn't really a funny town. There are a lot of smart people there, but comedy isn't at the forefront of their minds. ~ George Meyer

There's a brown leather section, a green leather section, a red leather section and a tan leather section. Upstairs, there are four bedrooms, all in a row. And everywhere you look there are fireplaces. There's one in every bedroom, there's one in the living room, another in the dining room and still another in the library. There aren't any in the bathrooms or the kitchen. My mother and father call the ~ Judy Blume

A simple word of greeting, an offer of a cup of coffee on me, a smile and a hug will all go a long way toward reconciliation. A listening ear can open a wandering heart to the thought that God still loves them, and there just might be a place still set for them at their Father's table. ~ Katherine J. Walden

Wolves, declared the document, like all other wildlife "have a right to exist in a wild state," one that "derives from the right of all living creatures to co-exist with man as part of natural ecosystems. ~ Bruce Hampton

Too tired of living under the same sky with their old faces.
So sick of being in the same room with their echoing voices.
They made my soul heavy, as much as they corrupted my mind.
They forced me to see my world in their colors as if I were a colorblind.
A walking dead is what they made of me, but I cannot take this anymore.
I'll find my way back home to the old me;
To the beautiful dreamy little girl I've been before… ~ Samiha Totanji

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I think that one thing that people are missing is that we are never going to be able to fix this country's [American] economy in the long run until we fix our public education system. ~ Michelle Rhee

Well, she was no stranger to loss, to hurt feelings, to prejudice. But she'd decided long ago not to let pain dictate her life. ~ Karen Witemeyer

The golden age of cultural theory is long past. The pioneering works of Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are several decades behind us [ … ] Some of them have since been struck down. Fate pushed Roland Barthes under a Parisian laundry van, and afflicted Michel Foucault with Aids. It dispatched Lacan, Williams and Bourdieu, and banished Louis Althusser to a psychiatric hospital for the murder of his wife. It seemed that God was not a structuralist. ~ Terry Eagleton

Day One, Morning The Dempsey Penthouse, New York On the morning the ships came, Meyer Dempsey found himself preoccupied with drugs, sex, and business. It would have been hard to believe that just six days later, only one of the three would seem to matter. "You're not listening to me, Heather," he said into the phone. "I'm going to be in LA from Friday to Tuesday. I've already booked time with the studio on Monday. The whole reason I'm coming early is - " Heather cut him off, probably to feed her need for a zinger more than a reply that couldn't wait. Heather was always "on," never really able to take a break and just be a person for once. It was one of the reasons they hadn't been able to stay married. It was like living with a jester. "Because you want to do the Walk ~ Sean Platt

If everyone is a product of this society, who will say the things that need to be said, and do the things that need to be done, without compromise? Truth will never start out popular in a world more concerned with marketability than righteousness. It will initially suffer ridicule and even violence- yet ultimately it is undeniable. All of humanity is living in a dream world, but suffering real consequences. ~ Lauryn Hill

So on the one hand in school you're teachers are constantly telling you that you can be whatever it is you want to be as long as you put your mind and heart to it, and yet at the same time I was also getting the clear message of, well, what can you do really? ~ Sheena Iyengar

Kitten?"
"Yeah?"
His eyes were beautiful when they met mine, luminous and clear, and a long moment stretched out between us. "I love you. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Way back when I was four, I became increasingly sickly and spiritless. My mother took me to the doctor, who poked and prodded and deliberated. In the end, he pronounced, "She's depressed." Depressed at four years old. Why? No one had an answer....I have long evaded the real reasons for my discontentment. I still can't tell what they are, precisely, but I feel their presence most acutely in moments like this one with my grandmother, imagining a day in a big-box store that had replaced an old farm. ~ Alisa Smith