My Own Life Quotes

Let it be granted, that according to the letter of the Gita it is possible to say that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit. But after forty years' unremitting endeavour fully to enforce the teaching of the Gita in my own life, I have in all humility felt that perfect renunciation is impossible without perfect observance of ahimsa in every shape and form. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Instead of always asking how to get others to approve of you ... learn to ask: What do I really want, the applause of the crowds or to quietly have my own life? ~ Guy Finley

I guess I was actually sort of grateful that someone else was taking over my life. I mean, I'm obviously pretty terrible at managing my own life, so it was nice to know that it was in good hands. But also it was nice to have all these concrete tasks to do and be sort of distracted and consumed by them. It kept me from thinking about every depressing and weird thing that was going on at that time. ~ Jesse Andrews

There is a moment, in all my studying of movies and scripts, that I'd realized something elemental about human beings and why I'd been attracted to that imaginary world. Each piece of work was attempting to describe the human condition, in all its good, bad and ugly glory. At first, it'd been an extension of my own life, strangely mirrored in this world of 'fiction'. Each story wanted, no - needed - to reveal a human fragility, a human bondage which tied people to the things they did and to be the person they held in their heads. Those stories were something true and sometimes horrific but people were people and the parts didn't just tell the whole story. ~ C.J. Roberts

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead no where; but one has a heart, the other does'nt. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. On makes you strong; the other weakens you ... path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel,lookng looking, breathlessly. ~ Carlos Castenada

inspired my own life.
Victory has thousands father but failure always find itself an orphan.
--Fidel Castro ~ Fidel Castro

It's a kind of philosophy of my own life, to create the energy enough to keep on going. ~ Ernie Banks

It's easier for me to write certain character types because of my own life experiences, but I find it too artistically limiting to only write about red-headed kids who grew up in small town Montana. That's really part of the fun of fantasy, I think. Our imagination is basically unlimited. Okay, that's a terrifying thing about fantasy, too. ~ Brent Weeks

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. ~ Wheston Chancellor Grove

When I started singing about my life and what I was going through, I felt more confident. It was my own life, I was being myself, I was telling people what was happening. ~ Benjamin Clementine

I guess in my own life I don't really think much about manliness too much. I feel like a lot of men that I know don't sit around thinking, "How am I supposed to be a man?" I don't think that I have to prove anything. ~ Daniel Alarcon

We had idyllic summer holidays, building sandcastles with my father on the beach at Bridlington. It might sound strange, but I think that secure cocoon of familial love was so nourishing, it gave me the strength to live life on my own. ~ Kiki Dee

I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough ... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life: I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today. ~ Stephenie Meyer

I read 'Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them,' and I found frightening pieces that related to ... my own life. ~ Newt Gingrich

One thing I always admired about Daddy was the way he could bounce back from adversity. From the very beginning of his life, he'd had more than his share of broken dreams and disappointments. He lived through the Depression, a war, a couple of failed businesses and the deaths of two wives, but he always found a way to pick up the pieces and go on.
When I've hit low points in my own life, I could hear his voice in the back of head saying, "Baby, you've got to roll with the punches. ~ L.K. Campbell

In my own life, I find myself doing some task - driving or playing golf - and having a conversation with my mother or father, who are both deceased. I don't know if that means I'm mentally ill, but I suspect lots of people do it. And when I hold that conversation, different images of my parents appear to me. ~ James Remar

You may be asking yourselves, 'Who is this man standing before us?' i would like to reply to that question with something absolutely certain about my own life: The man standing before you is a man who has been forgiven. A man who was, and is, saved from his many sins. ~ Pope Francis

I write as if to save somebody's life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them. ~ Clarice Lispector

When envy lies within a woman's heart it cuts into her soul & gives her a toxic spirit. It is truly something to be disgusted by. I have experienced it so much in my own life that I can sense the energy of envy without any communication from the other person. It lingers in the air to pollute your environment. Envy is a brutal force of bad vibes sucking the love right out of your heart. ~ Bindu Envy In Women

I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world. ~ Elliot Cowan

'Control' had to do with my own life a lot, and that's why that seemed to be a film I could be the director of, because I had an emotional attachment to the whole story. And because of that experience, I feel that I can try other films. I didn't set out to become a director. ~ Anton Corbijn

The letter from Dan Gilbert, the booing of the Cleveland fans, the jerseys being burned
seeing all that was hard for them. My emotions were more mixed. It was easy to say, 'OK, I don't want to deal with these people ever again.' But then you think about the other side. What if I were a kid who looked up to an athlete, and that athlete made me want to do better in my own life, and then he left? How would I react? I've met with Dan, face-to-face, man-to-man. We've talked it out. Everybody makes mistakes. I've made mistakes as well. Who am I to hold a grudge? ~ LeBron James

If we are forced to talk about our lives, our sexuality, and our work only in the language and categories of a society that despises us, eventually we will be unable to speak past our own griefs. We will disappear into those categories. What I have tried to do in my own life is refuse the language and categories that would reduce me to less than my whole complicated experience. ~ Dorothy Allison

I have my own life. And I am stronger than you know. ~ Stevie Nicks

It's easier to write from my own life, and it's also more fun. I always write about relationships, for instance, whether they're romantic relationships, friendships, encounters ... there's always a lesson to be learned from them. ~ Jason Mraz

I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life. ~ Wally Lamb

Everything seemed meaningless to me. All of a sudden. My own life, the lives of others, of animals of plants, the whole world. It no longer fitted together. ~ Erlend Loe

In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to Spirit. ~ Wayne Dyer

It's a memoir of various events in my own life, but it's also a teaching book: along the way I explain the writing decisions I made. They are the same decisions that confront every writer going in search of his or her past: matters of selection, reduction, organization and tone. ~ William Zinsser

I really didn't care. I'd do something to somebody and walk in front of them the next day like it never happened. I had very very low value on my own life. ~ Bernard Hopkins

I'm a bit-part actor in my own life ~ Johnny Rich

On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of David Copperfield. Homer didn't have to open the book to know how the story began. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," he recited from memory. ~ John Irving

I've found in my own life that if my writing isn't going well, not much else will. It is the one constant, the key to everything else. ~ Sarah Dessen

Yes, I do feel the world revolves around me. After all, I am the main character of my own life. ~ Stefanie Schneider

If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed. For years I would stand with a foot in each sphere, drawn to the exotic universe that lay on the other side of the portal, wrenched back by the warnings that sounded like alarm bells in my mind. ~ Deborah Feldman

For the first ten years after I got out of graduate school, I studied success. I read every book I could get my hands on and took every training I could find, and that allowed me to become an expert in this area. I learned how to create high self-esteem and success in my own life and in the lives of others. ~ Jack Canfield

I had no idea what time I'd left, how I'd gotten home, who'd been up here, and how long he, she, or they had stayed. Another night, added to the hundreds that had gone before, shrouded in mystery. Really, when you thought about it, it was creepy. My own life was a secret to me. ~ Heather King

How I perceive others is a direct reflection of the judgments that I have placed over my own life. ~ E'yen A. Gardner

I would say that as I've gotten older, I trust my intuition more; I allow myself more freedom both musically, creatively and my own life existentially. ~ Matisyahu

I think back to the day I drove Michelle and a newborn Malia home from the hospital nearly 13 years ago-crawling along, miles under the speed limit, feeling the weight of my daughter's future resting in my hands. I think about the pledge I made to her that day: that I would give her what I never had-that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father. I knew that day that my own life wouldn't count for much unless she had every opportunity in hers. ~ Barack Obama

Many years ago I developed a theory of mutual exclusivity. I had observed in my own life that either God solved a problem or I solved the problem but both God and I did not work on the same problem at the same time. If I decided to solve it then God had better things to do than to help me. If I decided to turn the problem over to God then God would resolve the issue. When I refer to my solving the problem, I am referring to taking wilful action and deciding what the correct resolution is. If my family needs food, go out and work to earn money and feed them. There is a great difference between detachment and doing nothing. ~ Heather Cardin

What must I say to God when I meet Him? What shall I say to Him for my sins?'

'I shouldn't mention the word,' I said. 'He'll be the best judge of your life. If you've got to say anything I should say, "You sent us forth into the world incomplete and therefore weak. With my own life, in these circumstances, and according to my own nature, I did what I could to secure happiness. But I did not even know what happiness was, or where to look for it, and it was whilst I was in search of it that I dare say I got a little muddled."' -- Hindoo Holiday ~ J.R. Ackerley

I am not asking you to understand, Papa. I'm asking for you to accept."
"Accept what?"
Me. Accept me, Papa. "My decision to live my own life as I see fit."
It is so quiet that I suddenly wish I could take it back. Sorry, it was only a terrible joke. I should like a new dress, please. ~ Libba Bray

I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream ~ Jack Kerouac

In my own life, I have always viewed personal mastery as simply a medium through which I become capable of providing more service toward my fellow man. ~ Chris Matakas

My own life in India, since I came to it in 1893 to make it my home, has been devoted to one purpose, to give back to India her ancient freedom. ~ Annie Besant

I loved books. Loved reading. It not only gave me an escape from my own world, but opened a door into other worlds. It allowed me, at the beginning of my marriage, to suffer with some grace. As long as I had another world to go to, what did I care about how small and strange and terrifying my own life had gotten? ~ Molly O'Keefe

With 'Fellow Travelers,' I think I was consciously trying to imagine what my own life as a gay man might have been like if I'd been born exactly 20 years earlier. ~ Thomas Mallon

My mother is an actress and very well known in France; hence, I move to London to start my own life. ~ Eva Green

I know that you'll survive the upcoming battle," he said, "because I'll be fighting right beside you and I'll lay down my own life to protect yours."
"I ... oh," she said. It took her some moments to understand. "You ... will come with me?"
"Your fight is my fight," he said. Stark and direct, his words filled her with unsparing joy. "Your cause is mine. And more than that. Your heart is my heart. I love you, Astrid. My place is with you. Always with you. ~ Zoe Archer

But I had no plans to end my own life, and accidents couldn't be predicted. Neither could murder, unless my aunt and uncle were planning to take me out themselves. ~ Rachel Vincent

I look at it this way - I don't ever want to apologize for something i've said, but I want to be gracious enough to be ready to apologize if I ever need to. My answers to those questions have come gradually and after some trial and error. In my own life, personally and professionally, I've realized that being civil is an active decision that I get to choose to make several times a day. That's why I believe there's hope - civility is not extinct. It is a choice. ~ Dana Perino

It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious ... I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life. ~ Arthur Leonard Schawlow

My life has been such a blur since I was 18, 19 years old. I haven't even had time to contemplate my own life. By forcing yourself to write your life story you learn a great deal about yourself. ~ Grant Achatz

What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

My own life has had so many twists that I keep thinking I'll have one blessing that is not in disguise. ~ Ken Bruen

There's nothing I want. There's nothing I can't do. I don't care about anything. No matter what, I am an imposter. An actor in my own life. ~ Michelle Hodkin

Getting all emotionally wrapped up in made-up people's lives gives me a chance to take a break from my own life [ ... ]. ~ Arlaina Tibensky

In that other life, I am the center of my world. Of course, I love and care about other people - many other people. But at the end of the day, my thoughts and actions are mainly about managing my own life and my own emotions. Here, ~ Cynthia Swanson

When I go to movies and I love the movie, it's because it feels like it articulated something about how we're living now, and also gives me some insight into my own life. I feel actually altered after having seen it. ~ Josh Radnor

I could not resist the clarity of the world in books, the incredibly satisfying way in which life became weighty and accessible. Books were reality. I hadn't made up my own mind about my own life, a vague, dreamy affair, amorphous and dimly perceived, without beginning or end. ~ Frank Conroy

It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is. ~ Annette Bening

I had that very strange sensation of not recognizing my own life. ~ Jessica Pan

When my alarm jangled in the morning, I awoke feeling small and terrified. I couldn't find myself in my own life - there was no memory of me that I could grasp. There was no place outside of me where I belonged. So every morning I willed myself back into existence. ~ Leslie Feinberg

I did learn a lot from 'Project Runway,' things I could incorporate into my own life. ~ Angela Lindvall

It took awhile for me to get used to speaking candidly about my own life. I got into it, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. ~ Susan Lucci

I had been living in Ohio in my own house with my own life when my marriage abruptly came to an end. I had nowhere to go with my two sons, very little money, and not much to do in Ohio except be someone's ex-wife. My parents instantly and very generously invited my family to move back home to New York, where I could begin again. ~ Isabel Gillies

In my own life, I don't have intercourse. That is my choice. ~ Andrea Dworkin

I have a very hard time with confrontation in my own life, and I end up being way too nice. ~ Missi Pyle

I've taken lives, and I've taken my own life in my hands and trusted a friend with it. Yes, sir, I'd say that makes me a man."
"Neither makes you a man. The first makes you a killer. The second makes you a fool. Either may get you killed. ~ Brent Weeks

I do not want to have children, and that's okay. As it turns out, not wanting kids will absolutely not make me "less" of a woman. I am not defective. I am not wrong. I know my own mind. I have intrinsic value as a singular, autonomous person, and that value is not contingent upon me using my body to produce another person. Wanting to be child-free does not make me any better or worse of a human being than any other person who does choose to have children. It's just a choice I've made about my own life. It's no less valid a choice than the choice to become a mother. And that, to me, gets at the real heart of feminism: being granted the freedom to make choices for myself without judgment. ~ Jessica Burnell

I haven't lived my life through my daughters. Some parents devote everything to their children, which must be so hard, and it's very beautiful. But I'm a working parent, so I've always kept my own life. ~ Annie Lennox

Every time I get something under control in my own life, the world provides more material. ~ Cathy Guisewite

But, it was all true. I love you, more than my own life. More than anyone can humanly love anyone else. Every inch of you ... I breathe you, everyday. I live only to be with you. Hearing him confessing his devotion, made every part of my body tingle. ~ Jordan Deen

I find in the Psalms much the same range of mood and expression as I perceive within my own life of prayer. ~ Reverend Malcolm Boyd

To be a critical reader means for me: (1) to affirm the enduring power of the Bible in my culture and in my own life and yet (2) to remain open enough to dare to ask any question and to risk any critical judgement. Nothing less than both of these points, together, can suffice for me. I was a reader of the Bible before I was a critic of it, but I found becoming a critic to be liberating and satisfying, and therefore I judge criticism to be a high calling of inestimable value. Yet, I recognize the prior claim of the text and the preeminence of reading over criticism; accordingly, I see and occasionally am apprehended by moments in which the text wields its indubitable power. The critic's ego says this could be a taste of the cherished post-critical naivete; the reader's proper humility before the text says that a reader should not judge such things. ~ Robert M. Fowler

Why do any of us do what we don't want to do?" I don't respond, unsure what answer he's looking for.
He smiles, but it's sad. "Because we're afraid of what will happen if we don't."
I always considered fear to be a motivator or a reason not to do something, but I never considered it a reason to continue an ongoing behavior. This opens a vault full or questions about my own life. I've always assumed I'm afraid to engage in activities because I'm afraid of what might happen. But maybe I'm looking at it all wrong. Maybe I should be asking myself if I'm really afraid of leaving what makes me comfortable. ~ Denise Grover Swank

But this isn't their God, she decided. It's my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This god has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn't give, and doesn't take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it's hot, and when it's cold, God is simply there. ~ Haruki Murakami

It is true that I have been studying both humility and pride for many years for the purpose of weakening pride in my own life and cultivating humility by the grace of God. ~ C.J. Mahaney

I just can't see myself as a trophy wife. I can't imagine not having my own life. ~ Tamara Mellon

The thing I most connect with is the idea of not giving up. And that's a thing I have in my own life. You have to trust your instincts and keep trying. ~ Callie Thorne

I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life. ~ Dani Shapiro

I am alone. My heart beats only for myself. The strikers mean nothing to me. I have nothing in common with the mob, nor with individuals. I am a cold person. In the war I did not feel I was part of my company. We all lay in the same mud and waited for the same death. But I could think only about my own life and death. I would step over corpses and it oftened saddened me that I could feel no pain. ~ Joseph Roth

Everyone makes their own path, and I must make mine. The Bhagavad Gita - and ancient Indian Yogic text - says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life perfectly. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly. It is mine. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I was being hated for about 40 or 50 years by the whole world, but it did not destroy me, and it did not ruin my health. And the reason is because I just did not answer them. I had my own life. ~ Yoko Ono

I have in my own life merely carried to the extreme that which you have never ventured to carry even halfway ; and what's more, you've regarded your cowardice as prudence, and found comfort
in deceiving yourselves. So that, in fact, I may be even more "alive" than you are. Do take a closer look! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You like all animals at that moment, although no doubt you will one day choose your favorites. Your own nature will triumph. We are all born with our natures. You popped out of your mother's belly, I saw your eyes, and I knew that you were already you. And I think back over my own life and I realize that my own nature
the core me
essentially hasn't changed over all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel the same way I did when I woke up at the age of five. Sometimes I wonder if natures can be changed at all of if we are stuck with them as surely as a dog wants bones or as a cat chases mice. ~ Douglas Coupland

Writers of the world, if you've got a story, I want to hear it. I promise it will follow me to my last breath. My soul will dance with pleasure, and it'll change the quality of all my waking hours. You will hearten me and brace me up for the hard days as they enter my life on the prowl. I reach for a story to save my own life. Always. It clears the way for me and makes me resistant to all the false promises signified by the ring of power. In every great story, I encounter a head-on collision with self and imagination. ~ Pat Conroy

And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity. ~ John Steinbeck

And one of the things I learned is that one should live in spite of. Although, one should eat. Although, one should love. Although, it must die. Even it is often the same even though it pushes us forward. It was despite the fact that it gave me an unhappy anguish that was the creator of my own life. ~ Clarice Lispector

When I did 'Tokyo Drift,' a lot of the philosophy that Han lived by I have actually gone through in my own life. As I got older, I realized that I really believe in those philosophies, like the importance of family. ~ Sung Kang

No wonder everyone is keen to put their feet up and let Fate look after them. It's rather like your granddad. Or a very hands-on organised person, sort of your own personal PA.
Only in my experience Fate is no such thing, and the same goes for his little brother, Destiny. Quite frankly they've made a real mess of things where I'm concerned. So from now on they can bugger off and stop meddling. I'm taking charge of my own life, and when it comes to love, Fate can mind its own bloody business. ~ Alexandra Potter

You remember what else I said to you that day in the drawing room," he said. "I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that. It is unfair to tell you this, I know, when you can do nothing about it." He took a shuddering breath. "How you must despise me. ~ Cassandra Clare

I've got research, I have my own life experience I can apply, and I have my imagination. ~ Chris Cooper

The door available to everyone that can lead to happiness & success is the modest door of the public library. I found it to be so in my own life and work. ~ Herman Wouk

I can look back at my own life and see where a few words of praise have sharply changed my entire future. Can't you say the same thing about your life? ~ Dale Carnegie

I couldn't ever blame them for trying to get me to shop with them or ship for myself or simply enjoy my money - this was a behavior many people learned and exhibited in all kinds of circumstances in their lives. In my own life, I'd had friends who would hand me another drink and encourage me to stay out all night. I'd had friends who suggested we switch to drugs so we could stay awake longer. I'd also had friends who would happily skip a workout and suggest we split a large pizza instead. Now I had friends who tried to justify why I should buy things for myself. ~ Cait Flanders

I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself. ~ Pat Conroy

Most of the time I feel like I can't breathe inside my own life. Like I'm just existing. Not with you, though. I feel like I'm breathing fresh, clean air whenever I'm with you. I feel alive. ~ Samantha Young

Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don't know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don't know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life. ~ Hugh Prather