Ones Life Quotes

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment's grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one's life. ~ Chanakya

Being good is something that one must choose over and over again, every day, throughout the day, for the rest of one's life. ~ Cate Tiernan

Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one's faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one's life ~ St. Jerome

The local community is very important in one's life; the feelings of identification with a place and people. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Activities such as chanting, bowing, and sitting in zazen are not at all wasted, even when done merely formally, for even this superficial encounter with the Dharma will have some wholesome outcome at a later time. However, it must be said in the most unambiguous terms that this is not real Zen. To follow the Dharma involves a complete reorientation of one's life in such a way that one's activities are manifestations of, and are filled with, a deeper meaning. If it were not otherwise, and merely sitting in zazen were enough, every frog in the pond would be enlightened, as one Zen master said. Dōgen Zenji himself said that one must practice Zen with the attitude of a person trying to extinguish a fire in his hair. That is, Zen must be practiced with an attitude of single-minded urgency. ~ Francis Harold Cook

True freedom from fear consists of totally resigning one's life into the hands of the Lord. ~ David Wilkerson

When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable. ~ Oscar Wilde

A visit to Père Lachaise in Paris adds a year to one's life ~ J.G. Ballard

[No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial. ~ Charles Frazier

The record of one's life must needs prove more interesting to him who writes it than to him who reads what has been written. ~ Elizabeth Kenny

Memory, instead of being a duplicate, always present before one's eyes, of the various events of one's life, is rather a void from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables ones to resuscitate dead recollections, but even then, there are innumerable little details which have not fallen into that potential reservoir of memory, and which will remain for ever unverifiable. ~ Marcel Proust

Peeking through the window, he saw empty shelves. Strange how a place so associated with one's life could vanish so fast. ~ John J. Kelley

I feel an overwhelming compassion and understanding for another human being caught in a situation where the way out is so obvious to others but not to him. Dreams are so important in one's life, yet if followed blindly, they can lead to the disintergration of one's soul. ~ Maria Campbell

You know, when you talked about good days and bad days, do you think right now counts as the good days?"
"It depends. How do you feel right now?"
Rania closed her eyes when she said, "I feel strange. I haven't felt like this for a long time."
Zaheed took a deep breath. "How so?"
She shrugged. "Perhaps, it's because I'm in a whole new place, where I haven't set my foot before; the air smelt different and I'm talking to a stranger. It made me feel like I've just had all my memories erased and replaced with new ones. ~ Diyar Harraz

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. ~ Aldous Huxley

One's 'life' is 'fractured'; he does not even know what he is living for. What is the essence of the human life? It is that one can attain whatever life form one wants, or he can attain ultimate liberation (moksha) if he wants moksha. ~ Dada Bhagwan

If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is terribly bad form to admit to being terrified for one's life, but nobody in their right mind would go to a Court banquet without making preparations. One must have the right costume, the right Faces, and at least eighty-two ways of avoiding assassination. ~ Frances Hardinge

Retracing the various episodes of one's life, one is disconcerted to discover that one was not as noble as one thought oneself at the time. ~ Phyllis Bentley

It is curious to note how fragile the memory is, even for the important times in one's life. This is, moreover, what explains the fortunate fantasy of history. ~ Marcel Duchamp

What are the things that make adults depressed? The master list is too comprehensive to quantify (plane crashes, unemployment, killer bees, impotence, Stringer Bell's murder, gambling addictions, crib death, the music of Bon Iver, et al.) But whenever people talk about their personal bouts of depression in the abstract, there are two obstructions I hear more than any other. The possibility that one's life is not important, and the mundane predictability of day-to-day existence. Talk to a depressed person (particularly one who's nearing midlife), and one (or both) of these problems will inevitably be described. Since the end of World War II, every generation of American children has been endlessly conditioned to believe that their lives are supposed to be great -- a meaningful life is not just possible, but required. Part of the reason forward-thinking media networks like Twitter succeed is because people want to believe that every immaterial thing they do is pertinent by default; it's interesting because it happened to them, which translates as interesting to all. At the same time, we concede that a compelling life is supposed to be spontaneous and unpredictable-- any artistic depiction of someone who does the same thing every day portrays that character as tragically imprisoned (January Jones on Mad Men, Ron Livingston in Office Space, the lyrics to "Eleanor Rigby," all novels set in affluent suburbs, pretty much every project Sam Mendes has ever conceived, etc.) If you know ~ Chuck Klosterman

To think how different ones life would be had one moment not altered it all - just don't sit there too long or you'll self sabotage all your growth. ~ Nikki Rowe

Habits gradually change the face of one's life as time changes one's physical face; & one does not know it. ~ Virginia Woolf

What is ugly about life is that it so often only provides uneasy half solutions that are so seldom pure and tragic ones. ~ Harry Graf Kessler

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life ~ James Baldwin

The more settled and ordered one's life - and in particular one's communal life - the easier it becomes for one's imagination to fail. ~ Charles Krauthammer

...the danger of developing a policy of rush, of being gradually more and more obsessed by what one has to do next. In this way one may come to exist as in a prison, and one's life may cease to be one's own. One may take the dog out for a walk at eight o'clock, and meditate the whole time on the fact that one must begin to read at a quarter to nine, and that one must not be late.
And the occasional deliberate breaking of one's programme will not help to mend matters. The evil springs not from persisting without elasticity in what one has attempted, but from originally attempting too much, from filling one's programme till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the programme, and to attempt less. ~ Arnold Bennett

He's rumored to have more bravery than sense."
"Then he and Gabe make a good pair," Oliver growled.
"Lay off of him, will you?" Jarret told Oliver. Closest to being a blend of their parents, he had black hair but blue-green eyes and no trace of Oliver's Italian features. "You've been ragging him ever since that stupid carriage race. He was drunk. It's a state you ought to be familiar with."
Oliver whirled on Jarret. "Yes, but you were not drunk, yet you let him-"
"Don't blame Jarret," Gabe put in. "Chetwin challenged me to it. He would have branded me a coward if I'd refused."
"Better a coward than dead." Oliver had no tolerance for such idiocy. Nothing was worth risking one's life for-not a woman, not honor, and certainly not reputation. A pity that he hadn't yet impressed that upon his idiot brothers.
Gabe, of all people, ought to know better. The course he'd run was the most dangerous in London. Two large boulders flanked the path so closely that only one rig could pass between them, forcing a driver to fall back at the last minute to avoid being dashed on the rocks. Many was the time drivers pulled out too late.
The sporting set called it "threading the needle." Oliver called it madness. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

It wasn't the big decisions that set the course of one's life; it was the slow accretion of all the little ones. ~ Lauren Willig

When attention is given to the spiritual aspect of one's life, it brings a sense of belongingness, and responsibility, compassion and caring for the whole of humanity. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

The love of one's life was never that which you wished for or hoped for or forgot or lost or mistook; it was the partner you spent your long days with ... ~ Kameron Hurley

To make him important in one's life requires an overactive imagination. Unfortunately, mine never knows when to quit. ~ Carrie Fisher

So to conduct one's life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it. ~ Henrik Ibsen

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one's life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one, and resolving to savor every second of joy within reach. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal. ~ Susan Neiman

It takes some living to discover that the living itself is one's life, that life is not a goal to attain but a possession to relish. ~ Dale Rex Coman

When you consider your dreaming explorations, and
where you may be pulled within those journeys, be aware
that your daytime actions also bring consequences to alternate realms, and that there are beings who will actively waylay your voyaging awareness. To be waylaid is to waste
one's life and one's time. ~ Lujan Matus

Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily ... ~ Wilhelm Reich

What would happen is that people like Geroge and Alyx would grow old and die chasing a dream. Although there were probably worse things to do with one's life. ~ Jack McDevitt

There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme ~ Jacqueline Carey

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all. ~ Albert Camus

Being a man is the continuing battle for one's life. One loses a bit of manhood with every stale compromise to the authority of any power in which one does not believe. ~ H. Rap Brown

Slow' and 'down' are modes of the soul; they are connective modes, ways of keeping connected to oneself and to one's environment. 'Slowing downwards' refers to more than simply moving slowly, it means growing down towards the roots of one's being. Instead of outward growth and upward climb, life at times must turn inward and downward in order to grow in other ways. There is a shift to the vertical down that re-turns us to root memories, root metaphors, and timeless things that shape our lives from within. Slowing downwards creates opportunities to dwell more deeply in one's life, for the home we are looking for in this world is within us all along. The lost home that we are seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul. ~ Michael Meade

The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Of course, to be a mother and a housewife is a vocation of a very high kind. But I simply felt that it was not the whole of my vocation. I knew that I also wanted a career. A phrase that Irene Ward, MP for Tynemouth, and I often used was that 'while the home must always be the centre of one's life, it should not be the boundary of one's ambitions'. ~ Margaret Thatcher

My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see. ~ Jeffrey Tayler

I think that the exactitude of the photograph has a sort of compelling nature based in its power to duplicate life. But to me the real power of photography is based in death: the fact that somehow it can enliven that which is not there in a kind of stultifying frightened way, because it seems to me that part of one's life is made up of a constant confrontation with one's own death. ~ Barbara Kruger

Young man, there are two cringe-worthy phrases in one's life that must be said, no matter what."

"Which two?"

"'Thank you', and 'I'm sorry'."

"What can anybody do to me if I don't say them?"

"Someday, you'll say those words in tears. ~ Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù

If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature? ~ Leon Trotsky

Live not one's life as though one had a thousand years, but live each day as the last. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The Englishman's approach to vulgarity is so clumsy that it makes it seem dirtier than it really is, but the Frenchman lifts it with a light, dexterous touch onto a plane of inimitable humour. To go to bed with Balzac is to know what one has missed all one's life. ~ Jean Lucey Pratt

All trials are trials for one's life. ~ Oscar Wilde

It's easy to hate and point out everything that is wrong with the world; it is the hardest and most important work in one's life to free oneself from the bonds of fear and attachment. ~ Noah Levine

When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like a flood. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Remaining adolescent means rejecting all compensatory lies about one's life ... ~ Chris Kraus

People with autism don't need wheelchairs, artifical legs, or a guide dog. Their prosthesis is people,' says Ruth Christ Sullivan, Ph.D., a founder of the Autism Society of America (ASA), and I could agree with her more. Having good direct support staff in your loved one's life is what makes the difference between a good life and a dismal one. ~ Chantal Sicile-Kira

I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. He whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can. ~ C.S. Lewis

The idols of modern culture have had a profound influence on the shape of our work today. In traditional societies people found their meaning and sense of value by submitting their interests and sacrificing their desires to serve higher causes like God, family, and other people. In modern societies there is often no higher cause than individual interests and desires. This shift powerfully changed the role of work in people's lives - it now became the way we defined ourselves. Traditional cultures tended to see people's place on the social ladder as assigned by nature or convention, each family having its "proper place." That view had put too little stock in the role of individual talent, ambition, and hard work for determining the outcome of one's life. But modern society responded by putting too much stock in the autonomous person. ~ Timothy Keller

One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world. ~ Hannah Szenes

Teaching is really a natural extension of one's practice
one wants to share something that's so influential and beautiful in one's life. ~ Rodney Yee

We're constantly reminded that this precious life is what you make of it. But what if you're not sure of what you want to make it into?
On the one hand there are those resolute in their life's agenda and objectives, often set by the scriptural society they choose to adhere to, or one passed down from parents and family. They know what they want because they allow themselves to be told what is important, to be guided by those who have gone before. A proven formula maybe, or an unrealistic dream. Is true success in ones life fairly measured against someone else's achievements, should we use those achievements of others as our own check list? Surely we will find happiness just as they have, or not, at the end of it.
The opposite end of the spectrum sees the tragic dreamers, unable to answer the question of why they're even here, the absence of knowing what their true calling is drives them close to insanity, desperate to live a meaningful life but haunted by the inability to see what constitutes as such. Often turning to artistic release to try and express themselves, their own high standards against which they measure themselves tragically, often fatally high.
I find myself somewhere in the middle. I know what society expects but I don't agree with all of it. Much I have to adhere to simply to exist. Fortunately an education grants me a career not a job, that in the current world gives me choices that others do not and I am thankful. But I'm concious that the wel ~ Raven Lockwood

One works because I suppose it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. The days one works are the best days. On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one's life going ... ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

But it is dangerous to lay a map of one's life over another's, to make it a trap. ~ Heather Christle

This was the difficulty with laws and with legal language: they used language which very few people, apart from lawyers, understood. Penal Codes, then, were all very well, but she wondered whether it might not be simpler to rely on something like the Ten Commandments, which, with a bit of modernisation, seemed to give a perfectly good set of guidelines for the conduct of one's life, ~ Alexander McCall Smith

this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality ~ Marcel Proust

Making money isn't hard in itself ... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

To change one's field of influence is to change the course of one's life. ~ Jenny Reese Clark

What underlies this [Benedictine] rule is the assumption that God is experienced most clearly in a well-ordered day. God is the God of order, not chaos. A chaotic day in which there is no purpose and intention leads to a troubled and dislocated life, irritated by the events of the day because they control and run one's life. The structure of the day gives purpose, intent, and meaning as God is encountered in the events of daily life. When the day is ordered, serendipitous events may change he course of he day, but God's presence in these events more readily is seen because the day has been ordered, and the eyes and the heart have been watching. ~ Robert E. Webber

To spend one's life being angry, and in the process doing nothing to change it, is to me ridiculous. I could be mad all day long, but if I'm not doing a damn thing, what difference does it make? ~ Charles Fuller

There are times in one's life when a good book - the right book -
feels like a voice speaking in the darkness,
reaching out from the past;
providing solace when all else seems lost. ~ Justine Picardie

One's life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his ego. If one is paranoid, the other is metanoid. ~ Alan W. Watts

I myself have never been enchanted by the dream of the white wedding, and, heaven help us, the expectation that this exquisitely catered event should be 'the happiest moment' of one's life. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

There are a lot of funny things that happen in one's life. ~ Pierce Brosnan

The qualities and capacities that are important in running-such factors as will power, the ability to apply effort during extreme fatigue and the acceptance of pain-have a radiating power that subtly influences one's life. ~ Jim Fixx

Ethical knowledge is the emplotment of one's life in the theological narrative ~ James K.A. Smith

As an old man ... looking back on one's life, it's one of the things that strikes you most forcibly-that the only thing that's taught one anything is suffering. Not success, not happiness, not anything like that. The only thing that really teaches one what life's about ... is suffering, affliction. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one's life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury. ~ Anish Kapoor

Love requires that true education should be easily accessible to all and should be of use to every villager in this daily life. The emphasis laid on the principle of spending every minute of one's life usefully is the best education for citizenship. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The mistakes of my youth have allowed me to see what true love is through the experience of its absence. They have allowed me to see that love is not a feeling but an action. It is the laying down of one's life for the beloved. It is not the laying down of someone else's life or body for our own gratification. Ultimately, as a Christian, I have come to see that love is not merely an action but a commandment. We are commanded to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor - and our enemy. Clearly true love has nothing to do with selfishness in any ~ Joseph Pearce

If one's life is so unsatisfying that an unhealthy activity brings a shred of happiness, it is nigh impossible to give it up unless something that brings greater happiness can be enjoyed in its stead. (28) ~ Prem Prakash

There are times when one's life appears to be a stage. People come, people go. They come in order to go, and go with no intent of return. When they return, they return as one's past. A past that would make you feel that the present is false. ~ Vijay Tendulkar

One cannot be honest even at the end of one's life, for no one is wholly alone. We are bound to those we love, or to those who love us, and to those who need us to be brave, or content, or even happy enough to allow them not to worry about us. So we must refrain from giving pain, as our last gift to our fellows. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

The greatest obligation of one's life is to know one's personal legend ~ Paulo Coelho

In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life. ~ Marcel Proust

Though all one's life a fool associates with a wise person,one no more comprehends the Truth than a spoon tastes the flavor of the soup. ~ Gautama Buddha

There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can't explain without handing over a full map of one's life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand for long days and nights when things were bad or good, or when things were too small to be described at all: when things just were. This is a life. ~ Colm Toibin

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Throughout one's life, the mind remembers in such strange ways. Those experiences worth remembering will be recalled with ease; crystal clear insights into the past. Together with a smile they will be woven into yarns and shared with others. ~ Calum J. Lambie

He knew there were two kinds of truth in this world. The truth that was the unalterable bedrock of one's life and mission. And the other, malleable truth of politicians, charlatans, corrupt lawyers, and their clients, bent and molded to serve whatever purpose was at hand......The weight and guilt of possibly having made a horrible mistake so long ago was lifted.
It was Bosch who felt like the man proven innocent and released from a cage. ~ Michael Connelly

For me, white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own. ~ Peggy McIntosh

Where there is love, do what you will, it will be right action. It will never bring conflict to one's life. In the flame of love, all fear is consumed. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Islam teaches that one can only find peace in one's life by submitting to Almighty God (Allah) in heart, soul and deed. ~ Raad

To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings. ~ Clifton Fadiman

American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds. ~ Kenny Smith

A blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing, But the man who lves that span, he is something ... A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. ~ Chaim Potok

One of the biggest steps to gaining control over one's life is gaining control over one's self. ~ Zero Dean

Has it ever occurred to you that Max feels the same basic contempt for you as you do for him?"
"He feels contempt for me?"
"It is something he feels very readily."
"No, I hadn't thought that."
"Well, the whole world isn't driven by your appetites, and people who are not feel themselves your superior, naturally. He struggles very hard to make allowances for you. He is not tolerant, but he is charitable. Or perhaps it is the other way around."
"One becomes tired of analyzing his character," Danton said. "As if one's life depended on it. ~ Hilary Mantel

Adam, we hear, walked in easy fellowship with God in the cool of the evening and spoke to him as to a friend. This ordering of Adam to God meant that our first parent was effortlessly caught up in adoration. The term "adoration" comes from the Latin ado ratio, which in turn is derived from "ad ora" (to the mouth). To adore, therefore, is to be mouth to mouth with God, properly aligned to the divine source, breathing in God's life. When one is in the stance of adoration, the whole of one's life - mind, will, emotions, imagination, sexuality - becomes ordered and harmonized, much as the elements of a rose window arrange themselves musically around a central point. ~ Robert E. Barron

But the memories that hang heaviest are the easiest to recall. They hold in their creases the ability to change one's life, organically, forever. Even when you shake them out, they've left permanent wrinkles in the fabric of your soul. ~ Julie Gregory

It is curious that while one's education is the part of one's life over the conditions of which one has least individual control, the results of it are held to brand one irrevocably. ~ Celia Green