Owning Life Quotes

Such was the love of this grandson for his grandmother that two years after the death of his mother, when she herself fell gravely ill, he vowed to her that someday he would try to tell the world her life story.
'But why?' she asked humbly. 'I'm no one, just a girl from the coast'
'But you are everyone, Grandma,' the young Pramoedya told her. 'You are all the people who have ever had to fight to make this life their own. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

We are all capable of regulating how we think and feel. It just boils down to owning that power. ~ Carlos Wallace

Sometimes the writer has to learn the hard way of creating a bad work to become a best-seller yet doesn't surrender to the negative where other writers will. ~ Millicent Ashby

To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall]. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

So always look for the silver lining And try to find the sunny side of life. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Being in your mid-thirties brought benefits, I reminded myself. You began to appreciate tidiness, smallness, things in their place. This is the shape your life has taken, I said. Be existential. Go to sleep. ~ Wally Lamb

New York may end up being no more than a scrim, a spectral film that is none other than our craving for romance - romance with life, with masonry, with memory, sometimes romance with nothing at all. This longing goes out to the city and from the city comes back to us. Call it narcissism. Or call it passion. It has its flare-ups, its cold nights, its sudden lurches, and its embraces. It is our life finally revealed to us in the most lifeless hard objects we'll ever cast eyes on: concrete, steel, stonework. Our need for intimacy and love is so powerful that we'll look for them and find them in asphalt and soot. ~ Andre Aciman

I feel like, as women and men and people on the planet, you just have to do the best with what life gives you. ~ Jennifer Love Hewitt

BE LIMITLESS,
CHANGE YOUR LIFE,
UNFOLD YOUR POTENTIAL,
BECOME YOUR OWN LIGHT,
ABILITY OF POSSIBILITY.

Ana Maria Frith, Limitless Change Your Life Book ~ Ana M Frith

It is absolutely fascinating to see how far educated, intelligent, self-proclaimed feminist women end up submitting to the authority of psychotic and mediocre men. It is as if these highly evolved women struggled intellectually with machismo but, in their daily life, end up submitting to a man. Women who have been beaten, even raped, forgive their attackers. One must ask whether they do not love them because of their brutality.

Cases of men submitting to women exist, but are far more rare. What is extraordinary is that many of these submissive women who allow their lives to be degraded are economically independent and have no need of a man. The explanation of female submission by violence or economic dependence
(as in traditional societies) does not hold water, since mistreated women today could easily take off. One explanation could be that women tolerate loneliness less well than men, and that they end, even after a free and emancipated youth, by needing a guardian - even if a disagreeable and hateful one. One often gets the impression that the idea of freedom is less important for women than the fear of loneliness. ~ Guillaume Faye

People go entire lives without figuring out exactly what they want from life. You already have it, and the future you and your dad have planned out for you in going to take it away from you. ~ Adi Alsaid

I knew that at least a few of the stars I saw were probably gone already, collapsed into nothing. I felt like I was looking at a lie. But I didn't mind. The world makes liars of us all. ~ Kevin Powers

When men are not regretting that life is so short, they are doing something to kill time. ~ E.W. Howe

We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success. ~ George Augustus Henry Sala

When we start raising different inconsistent truths, life may tip into bewilderment and the brain may go haywire. The confrontation between what is, not is, and maybe is, might embed an enduring showdown, harboring an intense apprehension, and bring us sometimes unwittingly to our knees ("The hidden sides of his character" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Life was about momentum. Pick a direction and don't let anything - man or storm - turn you aside. ~ Brandon Sanderson

It's not WHAT you do for a living that brings career satisfaction. It's WHO you get to be while doing what you do that does. ~ Laura Berman Fortgang

I'm accustomed to just working by myself, alone in the room and cranking up the music and just working and getting all into an obsessive state where I'm focused on this thing, and it's the one thing that I feel like I may have a little bit of control over in my life. ~ Eric Drooker

In racing there are always things you can learn, every single day. There is always space for improvement, and I think that applies to everything in life. ~ Lewis Hamilton

There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad. ~ Mark Twain

Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Not to marry, know love, or bind, their fate;
Your line to die for never seed shall take.
Death and torment to those caught in their wake,
unless each son finds his forechosen mate...
For his true lady alone his life and heart can save. ~ Kresley Cole

I do not wish to die- There is such contingent beauty in life: The open window on summer mornings Looking out on gardens and green things growing, The shadowy cups of roses flowering to themselves- Images of time and eternity- Silence in the garden and felt along the walls. ~ A. L. Rowse

This is good and hot."
"I remember you used to say that about someone I know."
He shakes his head. "Give it up, Scotts. That boat sailed, sank, and got towed."
"But ... "
"No. It ain't going to happen."
He sits down next to me and I curl up next to him.
"Nicky, it's hard being a child of your divorce and probably the reason somebody is dead."
Nick raises my head with his hands and looks at me and smiles.
"Life bites, baby girl."
" ... and sucks."
Amen. ~ Angela Johnson

But if you truly want to reinvent your life, you're going to have to learn to say yes. Even if it feels selfish. Or scary. ~ Claire Cook

One swallow does not make a summer,
neither does one fine day;
similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy. ~ Aristotle.

In [man's] mouth is ever the bittersweet taste of life and death, unknown to the trees. Without respite he is dragged by the two wild horses, memory and hope; and he is tormented by a secret that he can never tell. ~ Hope Mirrlees

This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made. When we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us, we will see wonderful sights, hear wonderful sounds, meet wonderful people ... and be happy to return home. ~ Henri Nouwen

in this moment, I could pretend I wasn't a savior or a Saint, that I could simply choose him, have a life, be in love. That we wouldn't have one night, we would have thousands. ~ Leigh Bardugo

So many things I thought I knew about my life were wrong. But that happened sometimes. All we can do is listen harder, hug harder and hope for the best. ~ Sarina Bowen

Over time, we learn life lessons we don't forget, and we adapt in response to the growing demands of our circumstances. Eventually, new ways of thinking and acting become habitual. There comes a day when we can hardly remember our immature former selves. We've adapted, those adaptations have become durable, and, finally, our identity - the sort of person we see ourselves to be - has evolved. We've matured. ~ Angela Duckworth

He had never been particularly inclined to philosophical meditation. He had never felt a need to delve into himself. Life was a continual interplay among various practical questions awaiting a solution. Whatever was out there was something inescapable which he could not affect no matter how much he worried about some meaning that probably didn't even exist. Having a few minutes of solitude was another thing altogether. It was the vast peace that lay hidden in not having to think at all. Just listen, observe, sit motionless. ~ Henning Mankell

My goal in life is to inspire people, transform hearts, and bring joy. I long for people to feel accepted, valued, and loved just as they are. ~ Melissa Regas

Life is filled with secrets. You can't learn them all at once. ~ Dan Brown

It doesn't matter if you look a million dollars but everybody has their flaws. So that's why it had to be that way. He was living the life, he would stay out for three days probably, get drunk and do whatever he was doing and then hit the gym for two days. But that's the craziness of that lifestyle - you're damaging yourselves in more ways than one. ~ Daniel Craig

Hypocrites,' replied Cale, 'I've come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are. ~ Paul Hoffman

My life goal is to see the world's one billion people with disabilities embraced and encouraged by the church. ~ Joni Eareckson Tada

The most important thing in life will always be family. The people right here, right now. ~ Vin Diesel

Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along. ~ Mary Oliver

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning. ~ Benjamin Franklin

An unpredictable, faithful and objective hazard seems to have systematically singled out my life to make what are normally uneventful incidents violent, phenomenal and memorable. ~ Salvador Dali

Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life? ~ Sylvia Plath