Otiose Life Quotes

He lived one of those lives that seem otiose because they are not linked to any community of interest, because all the riches stored in them by a thousand separate valuable experiences will pass when their last breath is drawn, without anyone to inherit them. ~ Stefan Zweig

The cumulative nature of the evolutionary process, the fact that memory is preserved, means that life grows not just through a random proliferation of new forms, but there's a kind of cumulative quality ... ~ Rupert Sheldrake

That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

When you spend too much time looking back and trying to figure out what went wrong, you're missing out on moving forward. ~ Vi Keeland

My father showed me so much love. He showed my brother so much love. He just, he had a rough life. You know, he grew up in a boys home in the Bronx. He didn't really know his own family. So I couldn't hold it against him that he didn't know how to parent. He didn't know how to be the perfect husband. But he loved as much as he could. ~ Hope Solo

How much better life seemed to me now that it seemed susceptible of being illuminated, taken out of the shadows, restored from our ceaseless falsification of it to the truth of what it was, in short, realized in a book! How happy the writer of a book like that would be, I thought, what a labour awaited him! ~ Marcel Proust

Easy for you to say," Polly said. "You've lived here all your life and stayed under the radar. No one points at you."
"Sometimes small children point at my butt," Aunt Rhea said. "But that's just on account of all the fried chicken. ~ Kathy Hepinstall

Yet in this big world, even the smallest sliver of a human had purpose. ~ Nicki Elson

In the darkest of times, laughter helps revolutionize our perspective. ~ Phil Callaway

Listen ... The universe is full of creatures that can get inside your soul. Things that try to take away the very things that make you who you are, who try to reshape you for their own ends, who want to eat you like a piece of fruit and spit out the seeds. It's Turtles all the way down. Are you listening? ... Listen, Chris. The Turtles don't deserve your life. You mustn't let them have you. I know them too well, Chris. They've touched me, infected me, possessed me. I've felt their contamination. I've been on their altars. Listen to me, Chris. They don't have the right ... Not even if they love you ... Not even if they're a god. ~ Kate Orman

'She's an era for you, an era of your life. If and when you break with her, you break with the only one alive who has shared that time with you. You fear that, the isolation of it, the burden, the scope of eternal life. ~ Anne Rice

But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting - do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect. ~ Philip K. Dick

I'm all about change, and I know things are going to move forward in life, and that's just how it goes. ~ Kid Rock

The more you die to self on daily basis, the more you enjoy life. ~ Sunday Adelaja

I think you grow up every year, every day. You learn something new and try to really worry about what's important in life. ~ Patrick Kane

I ventured into fiction in 1988 with 'What Love Sees,' a biographical novel of a woman's unwavering determination to lead a full life despite blindness. ~ Susan Vreeland

What you did to me doesn't define who I am. I am beautiful. I am at peace. You no longer have permission to steal my joy. My joy belongs to me and me only. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Flaubert teaches you to gave upon the truth and not blink from its consequences; he teaches you, with Montaigne, to sleep on the pillow of doubt; he teaches you to dissect out the constituent parts of reality, and to observe the Nature is always a mixture of genres; he teaches you the most exact use of language; he teaches you not to approach a book in search of moral or social pills
literature is not a pharmacopoeia; he teaches the pre-eminence of Truth, Beauty, Feeling and Style. And if you study his private life, he teaches courage, stoicism, friendship; the importance of intelligence, skepticism and wit; the folly of cheap patriotism; the virtue of being able to remain by yourself in your own room; the hatred of hypocrisy; distrust of the doctrinaire; the need for plain speaking. ~ Julian Barnes

I'm a mother, and my life is very full. ~ Sheherazade Goldsmith

Think of those fingers as abilities. A creative person may write, paint, sculpt, or think up math formulae;
he or she might dance or sing or play a musical instrument. Those are the fingers, but creativity is the hand that gives them life.
& just as all hands are basically the same - form follows function - all creative people are the same once you get down to the place where the fingers join. ~ Stephen King

In a very real sense, every person who denies God is living of borrowed capital. He enjoys living as if the world is filled with morality, meaning, order and beauty, yet he denies the God whose existence makes such things possible.

When you start with theism - "in the beginning God"- these destinations make complete sense. When you start with materialism though - "in the beginning, the particles" - that route takes you over a cliff of absurdity and despair. ~ Gregory Koukl

When all my endeavor is turned toward Thee because all Thy endeavor is turned toward me; when I look unto Thee alone with all my attention, nor ever turn aside the eyes of my mind, because thou dost enfold me with Thy constant regard; when I direct my love toward Thee alone because Thou, who art Love's self hast turned Thee toward me alone. And what, Lord, is my life, save that embrace wherein Thy delightsome sweetness doth so lovingly enfold me? ~ Nicholas Of Cusa

It was astonishing to think that life had once been the sum of her current love-affairs. It was now the sum of her current problems. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

[May] this civic and social landmark [the Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Center] ... be a constant reminder of the inspiring service that has been rendered to civilization by men and women of the Jewish faith. May [visitors] recall the long array of those who have been eminent in statecraft, in science, in literature, in art, in the professions, in business, in finance, in philanthropy and in the spiritual life of the world. ~ Calvin Coolidge

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. ~ Thomas A. Edison

There's a quality of life in Maine which is this singular and unique. I think. It's absolutely a world onto itself. ~ Jamie Wyeth

Many of us inhibit our capacity for growth because the culture encourages us to live lives of uniformity. We stall, deny, ignore the ensuing crisis because of confusion, malaise, and yes, even propriety. ~ Joan Anderson

...the breath that sharpens life is life itself... ~ Philip Larkin

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Never hesitate to remove yourself from individuals or situations that threaten your peace of mind. ~ Peprah Boasiako

A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with the other waves. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

It's funny. We meet hundreds of people. We stop to remember them sometimes and they're so far away and we're not a part of them anymore. Makes you realise how important it is to be a part of someone. And stay that way with them. And we have visions of going out into the open world and treating it as our oyster... but it takes a small, mindful moment to make us realise that doesn't really mean anything when you don't have someone to call home. ~ C. JoyBell C.

A life with a worthy purpose is worth living. ~ Debasish Mridha

Every life starts with the same beginning and ends with the same end. The rest is the story, even if you don't understand it, even if you aren't sure which parts are true and which parts are your brain trying to make sense out of smoke. ~ Maria Dahvana Headley

Love and life. Things that could be given or taken away in a heartbeat, all in the pursuit of power. ~ Kiersten White

Only locks in life are what you think you know, but don't. Accept your ignorance and try something new. ~ Dennis Vickers

What Walter thinks is that people are like rivers. We never stay in the same place but jest keep flowing along, learning new stuff and picking up new experiences and changing all the time. So today's you isn't the same as yesterday's you and won't be the same as tomorrow's you.
But Walter also thinks that there's a real perfect you that you're always trying to get to, and the better you are at living your life, the closer you come to it. ~ Rebecca Rupp

The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life. ~ Roy Jenkins

Time can lessen the hurt; the empty place we have can seem smaller as other things and experiences fill our life; we can forget for periods and feel as if our loved one didn't die; we can find sense in the death and understand that perhaps this death does fit into a bigger design in the world; we can learn to remember the good and hold on to that.
But we cannot 'get over it,' because to get over it would mean we were not changed by the experience. It would mean we did not grow by the experience. It would mean that our loved one's death made no difference in our life.
There is an interesting discussion in the Talmud, an ancient Jewish writing. Those Jews had the custom of rending their garments - literally tearing their clothes - to symbolize the ripping apart that death brings. But the question was raised, after the period of mourning, could you sew the garment up and use it again? The teachers answered yes, but when you mended it, you should not tuck the edges under so it would look as if it had never been torn. This symbolized the fact that life after grief is not the same as before. The rent will show. ~ Deborah Spungen

We are always in a constant state of conspiracies,
at least thats what they keep telling us ... ~ Faith Brashear

But she had learnt, in those solemn hours of thought, that she herself must one day answer for her own life, and what she had done with it; and she tried to settle that most difficult problem, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Thirty was a big deal for me. It was the age where I reevaluated everything - how I approached life and how I thought about myself. When I look at my 20s, or when I look at any period in my life, I think about how much time I've wasted trying to find the right man. ~ Amy Adams

What really separates people who are habitually upbeat and optimistic from those who are consistently miserable is how the circumstances of life are interpreted and processed. ~ Robin S. Sharma

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim. ~ Bertrand Russell

As an actor, you are aware of how a role can seep into your real life. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

I'd probably long ago have gone seven kinds of crazy, one for each day of the week, if I didn't simplify my life in every area where I do have some control. ~ Dean Koontz

I didn't pretend I was ever going to live under a bridge. I didn't pretend bad shit didn't exist. I didn't pretend I didn't live in some wider world. I got it. I had a television. I had the internet. But what was I supposed to do? Devote my life to serving the poor? Take away all the suffering in the world? ~ C.D. Reiss

I'm not one of those people who had a burning passion for 'Peter Pan' all my life. Although I can't remember a time when I didn't know the story, I didn't carry around with me an ambition to one day write the sequel. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health. ~ Voltaire